Art: Betty Compton

Rakish is Broadway’s Betty Compton. She sways in luscious curves about the stage. With a maximum of temptation she ululates the ditties of the Gershwin brothers. Friskily she tapdances. Languidly she intones between-us-girls dialog. People ogle through their binoculars, applaud mightily. Yet in 148 years no one will remember her.

Demure was London’s Betty Compton. Her smile was mischievous but reliable. She lived 148 years ago, but she is still remembered. Reason: Sir Joshua Reynolds painted her portrait. At the time she was 20. She was the daughter of the 7th Earl of Northampton. Her combined hair & wigs piled up enormously above her white brow, bright eyes, little pointed chin. She concealed her slenderness in an embonpoint of drapery, revealed the toes of her slippers. Sir Joshua painted her against an expanse of foliage. Her parents paid him about $1,050. It meant nothing to debutante Betty. When she went home she called Sir Joshua “a pompous little man.” Later she became Lady Cavendish, presented her Lord with eleven children, died at the age of 74.

The portrait has always remained in the family. But last week Baron Chesham, Lady Betty’s great grandson, decided he could afford to part with it. For Manhattan’s Knoedler Galleries offered more than $500,000 on behalf of an anonymous U. S. collector, record price for a Reynolds.