Offered in the May 2 sale, the 15 x 12in (38 x 30cm) oil on canvases depict the young Lord and Lady Wharton of Healaugh Priory in North Yorkshire.
Lord Wharton was an English landowner and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1614 until his death in 1622 at the age of 34. In 1611, he married Lady Philadelphia Carey, daughter of Robert Carey, 1st Earl of Monmouth.
Not long after their marriage, he purchased the estate of Aske Hall at Easby in Yorkshire from Lady Eleanor Bowes, a distant relative. Lord Wharton’s two nieces were painted by Anthony Van Dyck in 1640.
The portraits were consigned from a private house in Cheshire, and sold to a private buyer. Halls picture specialist, James Forster, described them as “elegant, accessible portraits with character and sympathetically relined”.
