Portraits from Waddesdon and More

     Among the varied collections at Waddesdon is a fine survey of English portraiture from the grand period of the 18th century. The works of Gainsborough, Romney, and Reynolds are especially significant.
    Below, a 1781 portrait of Mrs. Robinson by Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788), RA.

Below, another portrait of Mrs. Robinson by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-92), painted in 1782. Mary Darby Robinson (1757-1800) was an actress and poet, an early mistress of Prince George, later Prince Regent and George IV. Their affair lasted about a year, and it made her a sort of celebrity. She carried on with several other prominent men, including Banastre Tarleton for fifteen tempestuous years. Tarleton married an heiress in 1797, leaving Mary in ill health and semi-paralyzed. She continued to write poetry and novels until her death at the close of 1800.     

Below, left: George Romney (1734-1803) also painted Mrs. Robinson about 1781-82, now hanging in the Wallace Collection, London.  Right, Mrs. Robinson by John Hoppner (1758-1810), in the collection of Chawton House, Hampshire.
Please click on the small pictures for complete versions.

     Another woman whose beauty and fame, perhaps notoriety, led to many artist portraying her was Emma Hart, Lady Hamilton. Below left, Romney portrayed her as Circe; right, Romney paints Emma as Calypso, 1791-92. Both hang at Waddesdon Manor. According to the National Portrait Gallery website, Romney was "so obsessed by Emma that it became increasingly hard for him to engage creatively...(Between 1782 and 1786 alone) was  sequence of ... over sixty paintings."  

    Above left, Romney here portrays Emma as The Spinstress, which hangs in Kenwood House, The Iveagh Bequest, Hampstead, c. 1784-85.  Right, a very different Emma Hamilton as Bacchante, by French artist Elisabeth Vigee le Brun (1755-1842), painted in Naples, c. 1792, now in the Lady Lever Art Gallery in Liverpool.
    Among the hundreds of paintings at Waddesdon, a few portraits are by non-British artists. Below, left, by Vigée Le Brun's portrait of Martine-Gabrielle-Yoland de Polastron (1745–1793), duchesse de Polignac in 1783.
     Below right, Englishman Richard Cosway (1742-1821) portrayed the Daughters of Lady Boynton as Children (Maria Ann Georgiana Parkhurst, d.1821, Later Mrs Blachley, and Louisa Elizabeth Parkhurst, b.c.1796, Later Mrs Baxter). Cosway is best known for his many miniatures; he was married to artist Maria Hadfield (1760-1838). Some experts attribute the Boynton Children  portrait to Robert Home (1752-1834).

    I did not notice many pictures of children at Waddesdon, but here is another, of Louis-Philippe-Joseph duc de Montpensier, later duc d'Orleans (1747-1793) painted in 1749 by Francois Boucher (1703-1770). The pampered child, a cousin of Louis XVI, later supported liberal French politics but was himself guillotined in 1793.
   Above right, a 1755 preparatory sketch by Boucher for his portrait of Madame de Pompadour (1721-64), influential mistress of Louis XV. The completed portrait hangs in Munich.