Update: Double portrait of Victorian heiresses saved for the nation

The unique double portrait medallion of Victorian heiresses Florence and Alice Campbell sculpted by Henri-Joseph François, Baron De Triqueti, in 1857 has been acquired for the Buscot Park estate in Oxfordshire after an emergency export ban prevented it from leaving the country.

The sculpture was bought at auction in 2025 by a private buyer who applied for an export license. The UK’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport placed a temporary export bar on the piece, because it is the only double portrait in Triqueti’s oeuvre and of “outstanding significance to the study of Triqueti’s sources, work practices, patronage networks, and the commissioning of medallion portraits by English families.”

The export bar gave a UK institution until February 2026 to show the willingness and ability to raise the £280,000 necessary to reimburse the buyer and save the portrait for the nation. The Faringdon Collection Trust launched a fundraising campaign and were able to reach their goal, securing the portrait medallion of Florence and Alice Campbell for the permanent collection of Buscot Park.

Buscot Park is a perfect new home for the girls. Florence (the future subject of intense and repeated scandal) and Alice were the daughters of Australian gold trader and entrepreneur Robert Campbell who bought Buscot in 1859 and transformed it into a model agricultural estate. The 18th century Buscot Park was all but derelict when he bought it. He transformed it into one of the most highly industrialized farms in the country, building a massive reservoir fed by pumps on the Thames to create a massive irrigation system capable of watering its thousands of acres of farmland.

He grew sugar beets to make sugar that he then distilled into alcohol, something that had not been done before in England at a commercial scale. He built a railway to transport the harvest around the estate and a telegraph system to communicate instantly throughout the property instead of sending a guy on horseback.

Campbell had moved his family to England in 1852 and set to vigorous work climbing the social ladder. Triqueti was an enormously successful society sculptor, creating works for the highest echelons of British aristocracy, including Queen Victoria herself, so Campbell commissioned him to make the double portrait of his beloved daughters.

Florence was 12 years old when Triqueti made the portrait. Her little sister Alice was nine. Florence is on the left side with her hair gathered in a snood at the nape of her neck. Alice is on the right with her hair in pipe curls. They gave lovingly at each other and hold an urn with a growing lily. The medallion is bordered by an intricate floral wreath. The flowers symbolize purity, charity and their sisterly devotion.

Florence would marry at 19, separate, be widowed, have a very public affair with a married quack “doctor” old enough to be her grandfather, get an abortion, marry again, be widowed again, be accused of having poisoned him with antimony, become an alcoholic recluse and die at 33.

By then her father was gravely ill and his experiments in industrial agriculture at Buscot ended in bankruptcy. He sold the distillery and factories, and after his death in 1887, the entire estate was sold to financier Alexander Henderson, later the 1st Lord Faringdon. He was an avid collector of art, as was his heir Gavin Henderson, and the Faringdon Collection art decorates the interiors of Buscot today. Now the Campbell sisters have joined the masterpieces by Rembrandt and Reynolds.

* This article was originally published here