Mrs. George Horsley (Charlotte Mary Talbot, died 1828)

Mrs. George Horsley (Charlotte Mary Talbot, died 1828)

Mrs. George Horsley (Charlotte Mary Talbot, died 1828)

Artist:Attributed to John Westbrooke Chandler (British, 1763?–?1807 Edinburgh)
Medium:Oil on canvas
Dimensions:30 x 24 7/8 in. (76.2 x 63.2 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Bequest of Jacob Ruppert, 1939

Catalogue Entry
When this painting came to light in an exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1887, it was called a portrait of Mrs. Horsley by Romney. Since then the sitter has been identified as Mrs. George Horsley, born Charlotte Mary Talbot. Charlotte was the third daughter of Charles Henry Talbot (created first Baronet in 1800), of Mickleham, near Dorking, Surrey, and Belfast, County Antrim. She married George Horsley (1745–1792) of Epsom, Surrey, commissary of the British army in Bombay, in 1786. Edward Palmer, the lender to the 1887 exhibition, was the grandson of George Horsley's sister Mary, Mrs. William Palmer. A Mrs. Horsley is recorded as having sat for Romney on October 9, 10, 15, 16, and 18, 1787, and on August 13 and 17, September 30, and October 22, 1793 (Ward and Roberts 1904). It was therefore assumed that the portrait was by Romney, represented Charlotte Horsley, and dated to 1787.
In 1968, however, Ellis Waterhouse reattributed the painting to Chandler (verbal opinion in departmental files), possibly based on its resemblance to a half-length portrait of the Honorable Jane Montagu Douglas (property of the Earl of Home), which K. E. Maison called the finest work by Chandler that he had seen ("J. W. Chandler," Apollo 29 [May 1939], p. 241). Given Jane Douglas’s birth date of 1779, her portrait must be from the mid- or late 1790s. She wears a bonnet similar to that of the sitter in the Museum's portrait, and the palette of gray, black, and yellow described by Maison is also similar to that seen here. The arms are poorly drawn and the backgrounds negligible in both pictures. They are quite close in style, as far as can be judged from a photograph.
[2010; adapted from Baetjer 2009]

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