DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.68073#0395
ENGLISH, EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 369
what one could see of it was handsomer than ever; a cold maiden blush
gave her the sweetest delicacy in the world.”
Maria was a friend of the Countess of Coventry, who had attained
fame as the beautiful Maria Gunning and used to walk with her in
the Park and they must have been a very striking pair, for after the
Countess of Coventry’s death, Lady Waldegrave was considered the
handsomest woman in England. A month after Maria’s marriage
Sir Horace noted in a letter: “My Lady Coventry and my niece Wal-
pole have been mobbed in the park.”
There were three daughters of this marriage—Laura, Maria, and
Horatia—remembered to-day especially for the group portrait Sir
Joshua Reynolds painted of them and which belonged to Sir Horace
Walpole in 1782.
Lord Waldegrave died in 1763; and on Sept 6, 1766, Maria, now
Dowager Countess of Waldegrave, was married privately to H. R. H.
William Henry, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh, seven years her
junior. The marriage was performed in her own house in Pall Mall by
her own chaplain and she thus became the sister-in-law of George HI.
The secret was kept for some time and the King banished his brother
from Court, but after two years the Duke was taken back into Royal
favor and the Duchess bore her honors with such grace and dignity
that she became very popular at Court.
The portrait represented here, oils on canvas (35X x 27X inches),
was painted about 1779, or before.
“We hear,” the Public Advertiser printed on May 4, 1772, “that the
gentlemen upon the Committee for managing the Royal Academy
have been guilty of a scandalous meanness to a capital artist by secret-
ing a whole-length picture of an English Countess for fear their Maj-
esties should see it; and this only upon a full conviction that it was
the best finished picture sent in this year to the Exhibition.” Again
in 1775 a society reporter for the Morning Chronicle gathered up this
piece of gossip: “The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester are often
going to a famous painter’s in Pall Mall; and it is reported that he is
now doing both their pictures, which are intended to be presented to
a great lady.”
what one could see of it was handsomer than ever; a cold maiden blush
gave her the sweetest delicacy in the world.”
Maria was a friend of the Countess of Coventry, who had attained
fame as the beautiful Maria Gunning and used to walk with her in
the Park and they must have been a very striking pair, for after the
Countess of Coventry’s death, Lady Waldegrave was considered the
handsomest woman in England. A month after Maria’s marriage
Sir Horace noted in a letter: “My Lady Coventry and my niece Wal-
pole have been mobbed in the park.”
There were three daughters of this marriage—Laura, Maria, and
Horatia—remembered to-day especially for the group portrait Sir
Joshua Reynolds painted of them and which belonged to Sir Horace
Walpole in 1782.
Lord Waldegrave died in 1763; and on Sept 6, 1766, Maria, now
Dowager Countess of Waldegrave, was married privately to H. R. H.
William Henry, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh, seven years her
junior. The marriage was performed in her own house in Pall Mall by
her own chaplain and she thus became the sister-in-law of George HI.
The secret was kept for some time and the King banished his brother
from Court, but after two years the Duke was taken back into Royal
favor and the Duchess bore her honors with such grace and dignity
that she became very popular at Court.
The portrait represented here, oils on canvas (35X x 27X inches),
was painted about 1779, or before.
“We hear,” the Public Advertiser printed on May 4, 1772, “that the
gentlemen upon the Committee for managing the Royal Academy
have been guilty of a scandalous meanness to a capital artist by secret-
ing a whole-length picture of an English Countess for fear their Maj-
esties should see it; and this only upon a full conviction that it was
the best finished picture sent in this year to the Exhibition.” Again
in 1775 a society reporter for the Morning Chronicle gathered up this
piece of gossip: “The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester are often
going to a famous painter’s in Pall Mall; and it is reported that he is
now doing both their pictures, which are intended to be presented to
a great lady.”