Daughter of Robert Apreece and Sarah Hussey, she married Captain Francis Blake Delaval (1692 – 1752) at St. Anne’s church, Westminster, in August 1724. The Husseys lived at Doddington, to which she was heir, a hall built by Thomas Tailor, Registrar to the Bishop of Lincoln in 1600 and designed by Robert Smythson. The Hall passed to the Hussey family by marriage, when the Tailor line died out. The Husseys were penalised by Cromwell for their Royalist support, and were considerably impoverished, such that the house was neglected until 1760, when Sir John Delaval restored it. Rhoda inherited the house from Sir Thomas Hussey of Doddington, her maternal grandfather, in 1749. She and Sir Francis did not move into Delaval Hall, which had not yet been completed by Sir George, until 1728. Accommodating their twelve children (eight sons and four daughters) into a house designed for a bachelor Admiral, was difficult, and some of them were sent to stay with relatives in other Delaval houses at Dissington and Ford. The unruly brood became unknown as the ‘Gay Delavals’, renowned for their exuberant lifestyle and theatrical productions. Her costume is an idiosyncratic version – combined with lacing – of that in Rubens’s portrait of Helene Fourment (Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon; then in Sir Robert Walpole’s collection), which inspired dozens of imitations in the mid-C18th, after it was first adopted by John Vanderbank around 1730. It is particularly common in the works of painters, such as Hudson, who employed Van Aken as a drapery painter – but in none of their paintings does the costume resemble this. Anthony Mould prefers an attribution to Hudson (he also noted that the right-hand side was flattened with some losses). Alastair Laing felt the hand was crisper than Hudson, and too stylised for Pond, before realizing that the treatment of the eyes, in particular, betray Seeman’s hand. (Amanda Bradley)
Provenance: accepted in lieu of tax by H.M.Treasury and transferred to the National Trust in 2009
Marks & Inscriptions: Bottom centre: Incription bottom centre: “Rhoda Apreece, wife of Francis blake Delaval esq”
Text from National Trust website
Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: Seaton Delaval Hall, Northumberland
Material: Oil on canvas
Artist: attributed to Enoch Seeman the younger (c.1694 – 1744), Arthur Pond (1701 – 1758), Thomas Hudson (1701 – 1779)
Date: circa 1730
Image Details
Date: 21 May 2023
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/25s
ISO: 640
Licensing: Image of a National Trust asset. This image cannot be licensed.