The 7ft 1in x 4ft 2in (2.16 x 1.27m) oil on canvas came to the Florida auction on September 13 with a few condition issues.
The portrait shows the sitter – a Royalist who served Charles I and was executed in 1649 – dressed in military attire.
The original painting appears to have sparked later copies and it was produced as a mezzotint in 1775 by Valentine Green (published by John Boydell) and as a stipple engraving in 1818 by Robert Cooper. An inscription to the former print describes the location of the original picture at that time as in the collection of the Duke of Montagu.
Estimated at $40,000-80,000, the picture was knocked down at $37,000 (£28,720). The buyer was the sitter’s descendant, Alastair Granville Gordon, Earl of Aboyne, and son of the 13th Marquess of Huntly.
According to Andrew Ford, owner and auctioneer for Sarasota, the painting will be returning to the ancestral home of Aboyne Castle in Huntly, Scotland, where it will be mounted next to portraits of some other notable descendants.
