Yolande Lyne Stephens, née Duvernay (1812–1894)

Pending further research, it is not possible precisely to say when the collection was formed. Stephens Lyne Stephens’s father, Charles, had furnished his house at Chicksands Priory, Bedfordshire, with old master paintings,⁶³ all or some of which were presumably transferred to the Roehampton house bought by him in 1843, and then inherited by Stephens on his father’s death in 1851. In addition, however, Yolande may have been buying on her own account before her marriage, albeit not necessarily before the start of her relationship with Stephens Lyne Stephens. This is indicated by an undated note written by Alexandre de Laborde (who died in 1842) in which he wrote of Vigée Le Brun’s Portrait of the marquise d’Aguesseau de Fresnes (Washington DC, National Gallery of Art): ‘Ce tableau avait été acheté par le peintre Féral, expert, à un libraire (?) pour 10,000 francs et revendu à Mlle Duvernoy [sic] danseuse à l’Opéra de Paris, pour 14,000 frs’.⁶⁴ The last year in which Yolande danced professionally was 1837.⁶⁵ Additions to the collection were probably made during Stephens’s and Yolande’s marriage,⁶⁶ and certainly during her widowhood.⁶⁷ According to the limited provenance information in the 1895 sale catalogue, more pictures were acquired in the later 1860s than in any other period. This may well have been prompted by the completion in 1862 of the building of Lynford Hall, to which a bare majority of the paintings then acquired were destined to go, and by the availability of advice from Edward Claremont, as well as through him from the Marquess of Hertford and Richard Wallace.

It cannot be assumed that all paintings once acquired for the Lyne Stephenses remained permanently in the collection, since an example of a picture being in the collection for a relatively short time is known. Among the ten paintings loaned by Yolande to an exhibition in Paris in 1874 was a Veronese portrait of a young woman with a lapdog. It is now in the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.⁶⁸ It had once been in the Pourtalès collection and was thereafter in the collections of Demidoff, Mrs Lyne Stephens and Wynn Ellis.⁶⁹ According to an annotation in a copy in the National Gallery of the catalogue of the Pourtalès sale (1865), it was bought by Prince Demidoff and was then in his sale in 1868. In the Lyne Stephens collection by 1874, it must have been bought by Wynn Ellis during the exhibition or very soon after, since he died in 1875. However, the other nine paintings lent by Yolande to the 1874 exhibition were in her posthumous sale of 1895, suggesting that disposals by her were unusual, and, from the available evidence, acquisitions outnumbered disposals. They also outlasted them, with Yolande buying from the Beurnonville sale of 1881 three pictures by Lancret, F.H. Drouais and Nattier, all for the Paris apartment – further evidence, were it needed, of a passion for paintings which was both enduring and tempered with intelligence.⁷⁰