Portrait of Elizabeth Temple as a child
1793
Half length, wearing a loose white dress with a blue band and coral necklace. Signed l.l. Angelica Kauffman Pinx. Rome 1793. Oil on canvas, 24 3/4 inches by 20 1/2 inches.
Collection Details
By descent to Miss Sulivan, niece of 3rd Lord Palmerston; thence to her niece, Lady Violet Henderson, mother of the 2nd Lord Faringdon.
Background
This is almost certainly the portrait described by Angelica Kauffmann in her memorandum of paintings (published by Lady Victoria Manners and G C Williamson, Angelica Kauffmann, London 1924, p. 163) in the following words: Rome 1793. For Lord Palmerston, English, the half length life size portrait of a little girl about three years old, the daughter of the above Lord – painted on canvas; 2 spans 10 by 2 spans 4–40 Zecchini paid for through Mr Jenkins. 17th August. Palmerston’s accounts record a payment to Mr Day ‘for copy of Elizabeth picture’ in May 1794.
The 2nd Lord Palmerston was in Rome in 1792. His second marriage, to Mary Mee, took place in 1783. Elizabeth, the daughter of this marriage, who is likely to be the child depicted here, married Laurence Sulivan of Ponsbourne Park, Hertfordshire, and died in 1837. She was the sister of Henry Temple, 3rd Lord Palmerston, Prime Minister of Great Britain in 1855-8 and 1859-65.
The Trustees of the Faringdon Collection 24.
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