Lady Catherine d'Aubigny

 

Van Dyck painted this portrait of Catherine (1620?-50) around 1638, at the time of her marriage to George Stuart, Lord d’Aubigny (1618-42), King Charles' cousin. The garland she is holding alludes to her newly wedded state. Widowed after he fell at the battle of Edgehill, she was involved in a failed Royalist plot to take over London in 1643 and was briefly held in the Tower. She subsequently remarried to James Livingston, first Earl of Newburgh, and died in The Hague. Her son George later inherited his uncle’s title as Duke of Richmond and took for his third wife the lovely favourite of Charles II, Frances Stuart.