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Portrait of Lady Grace Anna Newenham
Horace Hone (British, 1756–1825)
1784
- Medium
- watercolor on ivory
- Classification
- Portrait Miniature
- Dimensions
- Framed: 9 x 7.6 cm (3 9/16 x 3 in.); Sight: 7.6 x 6 cm (3 x 2 3/8 in.)
- Culture
- England, 18th century
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, European Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- The Edward B. Greene Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
Lady Grace Anna Newenham (née Burton, 1725–1807) was the wife of Sir Edward Newenham (1734–1814), a prominent radical Protestant Irish politician and MP for Dublin, whom she married in 1754 at St. Thomas in Dublin. Lady Newenham herself came from a highly influential family with deep Whig political roots in Dublin. This miniature was painted in 1784, when she was nearly 60 years old and had been married for 30 years. This period found her husband, Edward, deeply in debt, going to great lengths to secure employment for his children, and planning a trip to America. While the former conditions would not encourage an artistic expenditure, the latter might have provided the impetus for this portrait to be commissioned.
Lady Newenham wears a gray wrap with a high white collar and a white low-neck dress. Her costume is summarily painted with quick strokes, and the ivory ground is allowed to show through particularly at her breast, enhancing the delicacy of her complexion. She is not, however, overly flattered as she would have been in the hands of a miniature painter like Richard Cosway (1742–1821). Instead, Horace Hone gently described her sagging jaw line as well as the wrinkles and…
