Described by Mildred Archer as 'one of the most sensitive portrait painters to work in India during the late eighteenth century' (1), Francesco Renaldi (c.1755-1799) was an English-born painter of Italian heritage about whose life relatively little is known. He entered the Royal Academy Schools in London in 1776, aged twenty-one. For two years after 1781, Renaldi traveled in Italy, initially with Thomas Jones, the Welsh landscape painter and pupil of Richard Wilson.

Evidently on at least one occasion, Jones exploited Renaldi's name to pass himself off as an Irish catholic in order to gain access to the prior of a monastery at Caserta near Naples - which would normally have been inaccessible to him on sectarian grounds - but Renaldi seems to have accepted this with good grace, even affability. While Jones left behind a now celebrated group of oil sketches on paper of the environs of Naples and other Grand Tour sites, no works executed by Renaldi in Italy are currently known. Years later, in 1798, Renaldi painted a group portrait of Thomas Jones and his family (National Museum of Wales, Cardiff) which may also contain a discreet but cheerful self-portrait. 

Upon returning to London in 1783, Renaldi attempted without success to establish himself as a portrait painter at 2 Portugal Street, a modest house located near Lincoln's Inn Fields. On November 3 of that year, Jones was pleasantly surprised to bump into Renaldi in Fleet Street and the two dined together not long afterwards. In 1785, perhaps frustrated by commercial sluggishness, even sensing the prospect of professional failure in a highly competitive metropolitan market for portraits, Renaldi applied to the East India Company for permission to travel to Bengal. He supplied the names and addresses of two references - Mr. Job Hart Price of Aldershot House and Robert Codd of the 59^th Regiment of Foot. These guarantors were evidently acceptable to the company, because the following February Renaldi was given formal approval to travel. He sailed aboard the East India Company ship, the Hillsborough, and arrived at Calcutta in August 1786.

For the next ten years Renaldi lived and worked in Calcutta, Lucknow and Dacca (now the capital city of Bangladesh). He was therefore one of only a relatively small number of European painters - among them William Hodges, Johan Zoffany, Tilly Kettle and Ozias Humphrey - who spent extended periods painting portraits of and for the nabobs - English, Scottish and Anglo-Irish gentleman of the East India Company - as well as local rulers such as Asaf ud-Daulah, the Nawab Wazir of Oudh. He painted a group portrait of Major William Palmer and his family at Calcutta in 1786. In 1789 Renaldi relocated from Calcutta to Dacca, a large town in eastern Bengal possibly in the hope of finding fresh patronage. He returned to Calcutta and in 1790 embarked on a leisurely tour up-country, reaching Lucknow in 1792 or 1793, where he seems to have remained for several years.

In total only around a dozen works - including the present, recently rediscovered portrait of Mrs. William Douglas and her son - painted by Renaldi in India are currently known but amongst them are a group of three individual portraits of Indian women which rank amongst the most intriguing and emotive images produced in British 18^th century painting. They have traditionally been identified as bibis, the term for an upper-class Indian woman who became a mistress or unofficial wife to a European resident. The first, known in two versions, both dated 1787, depicts a Mughal lady sitting cross-legged, wearing gold-striped green pyjamas and a white gauzed shift looking straight ahead (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; sold Sotheby's, London, 6 December 2023, lot 23, £825,000) and the second depicts the same sitter but with the addition of a hookah pipe (Private collection).

The third, a sensuous portrait of An Unknown Woman was painted two years later in 1789 at Dacca and depicts a Mughal lady reclining on a rug and cushion in a small room with green painted shutters and the door of British type - perhaps in a bibi khana, a small house or quarters which was frequently built behind the main house for ensuring privacy from visitors. The girl is holding a hookah and gazing at a piece of jewellery in her hand. As Mildred Archer wrote: 'It is her air of reverie and quiet calm, her ruffled dress with its soft texture, and above all the darting highlights on the hookah, silver pan tray, slippers and jewels that catch the eye and endow the painting with flashing brilliance' (2).

The reemergence of this double portrait of Mrs. William Douglas and her son, Philip may provide the key to help identify the subject of the painting at Yale. The young Mrs. Douglas, née Jane Bell, is depicted at full length wearing a white dress with a blue sash, seated in armchair with her right foot resting on a stool and working on a piece of needlework in her lap. Her son, Philip, is seated at a high chair playing with a glass vial of scent from his mother's jewelry box, which sits on top of a circular side table which has a pair of sewing clamps with thread attached. Behind them is an Anglo-Indian daybed draped in red fabric. Natural light is diffused from the left-hand side through a window shaded by green painted shutters of the same type and design as found in the portrait of the Unknown Lady at Yale suggesting that they are situated in a different but related part of the same house.

This raises the strong possibility that the present portrait and the Yale portrait were painted closely together, in the same residence, as part of the same commission. The likely explanation is that the Douglases and their young son, newly arrived in India as a family, were staying in the Dacca household of Jane's half-brother, Suetonius Grant Heatly. According to Suetonius Grant's nephew, Henry Green (son of William and Temperance Green) nephew, Heatly 'never married but formed a connection with a native of the Country, a thing of frequent occurrence at that time in India by whom he had several children whom he educated well and provided for - a daughter of his Mary was sent to England for her education' (Green/Heatly family historical archive, Cornell University Library). Suetonius Grant Heatly appears to be the clear candidate to commission portraits of his half-sister and her son, as well as an intimate portrait of his bibi at the same moment from Renaldi at Dacca in 1789.

Indeed, Suetonius Grant had a history of patronizing the European artists working in India. He was painted by Arthur William Devis in a group portrait with his sister Temperance and his Indian servants in Calcutta, c. 1786 (3). His brother, Patrick Healty (1753-1834), who also served in the administration of the East India Company was painted by Zoffany in India (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven). Partrick Heatly is depicted seated on a rock, thought to be waving farewell to their beloved sister, Temperance, before she sailed home to America to marry. A further portrait of a woman painted in India, identified as 'Ann Heatly', by Charles Smith (1749-1824), likely depicts one of Suetonius Grant's daughters by his bibi (4)

Mrs. William Douglas was born Jane Bell, the daughter of John Bell and his wife Mary, the second daughter of Sueton and Temperance Grant of Newport, Rhode Island. Mary was firstly married to Andrew Heatly or Heatley (1725-61) of Newport, Rhode Island by whom she had had issue - Suetonius Grant, Patrick, Jeanette, Mary and Temperance. Andrew Heatly died at Newport in 1761 and his widow remarried John Bell, a major in the British army. Bell along with his wife and her young children, subsequently moved to England, where they had further issue including a daughter, Jane.

Jane Bell married in England on 24 October 1785, Judge William Douglas (1755-1802), the second son of Lieutenant-General Archibald Douglas of Kirktoun and Witham, M.P. by his wife, Elizabeth Burchard. William Douglas had joined the East India Company in 1773 and was appointed Judge and Magistrate at Rajshahi in Bengal. He was later appointed to the position of Judge of the Court of Adalat (or Adawlut) at Dacca. Their son, Philip Henry Douglas was born on 24 August 1786 at Witham in Essex. A daughter, Jane, was born on 10 November 1789 at Dacca and another daughter, Mary on 25 October 1794.

Jane's half-brothers, Suetonius Grant Heatly (1751-93) and Patrick Heatly were already well-established in India by the time of her marriage to William Douglas. Suetonius Grant had obtained a position as a 'writer' with the East India Company after the death of his father through Jacob Wilkinson, a family friend. With his easy manner and his family's loyalty to the Crown, as well as his connections to other American loyalists, Suetonius Grant Heatly rose rapidly within the Company and amassed a considerable fortune. He was a protégé and favourite of Cornwallis when he was appointed Governor-General of India. Heatly became Collector of Chotanagpur and Palamu by 1774. By 1783, he held a similar position at Purnia as well as positions as magistrate for the province of Dana and chief judge of appeals at Dacca. He was also involved in an unsuccessful private venture to mine and sell coal in Bengal.

By 1796 Renaldi was back in England but suffering from gout. To the following year's summer exhibition at the Royal Academy, he sent three paintings - one of them a portrait of A Mogul lady, another a portrait of An Industanny lady and the third, a portrait of An Artist. He listed his address as 69, Margaret Street, Cavendish Square. In 1798 he was reportedly staying with his old friend, the Welsh squire and artist, Thomas Jones. After that, there is no record of him. In Mildred Archer's memorable words: 'He remains an isolated mysterious figure, as enigmatic in his own way as his Indian subjects are in theirs'.

1. Mildred Archer, India and British Portraiture: 1770-1825, London, 1979, p. 281.
2. Mildred Archer, 'Renaldi and India: A Romantic Encounter', Apollo, vol. 104, no. 174, August 1976, p. 102.
3. Sold, Christie's, London, 23 September 2005, lot 16.
4. Sold, Christie's, London, 13 July 2006, lot 14.

View page turning catalogue

Auction Details

Tuesday 11 February, 10.30am GMT
Donnington Priory, Newbury, Berkshire RG14 2JE

Browse the auction
Sign up to email alerts

VIEWING:

• Viewing in London (highlights):
  • Wednesday 29 January: 10am-4pm
  • Thursday 30 January: 10am-4pm
  • Friday 31 January: 10am-4pm
• Viewing in Newbury:
  • Thursday 6 February: 10am-4pm
  • Friday 7 February: 10am-4pm
  • Sunday 9 February: 10am-3pm
  • Monday 10 February: 10am-4pm
• Remote viewing service | Available by appointment
• Dreweatts 360 Virtual Auction Tour | Available from Thursday 30 January.