Oil on canvas, oval, 74cm x 61cm.
Inscribed with the identity of the sitter.
Peregrine Bertie (1686-1742), was the brother-in-law of John, 6th Earl of Exeter (1674-1721), through their marriages to the two eldest daughters of Sir John Brownlow, 3rd Baronet of Belton House.
Previously holding the titles: Lord Willoughby de Eresby and Marquess of Lindsey, he became 2nd Duke of Ancaster on the death of his father in 1723.
As a member of the Little Bedlam Club, which his brother-in-law had reformed, Peregrine Bertie’s portrait would almost certainly have been at Burghley during his lifetime, passing by descent in his family until 2007, and later sold.
It was eventually purchased by the Burghley House Preservation Trust in 2018, thus returning it to Burghley after an absence of more than two and a half centuries.
