“A Gem Too Precious”

Of form too fair for life’s tempestuous clime
In heart too pure to need corrections Rod
A gem too precious for the wear of time
She sought in Youth the bosom of her God.

This poignant portrait of Christian St Barbe in a décolleté gown was most likely painted as a gift for her future husband, Rev. Charles White, whom she married in 1802 at the age of seventeen.

Born in Southampton in 1784, Christian was the youngest of seven children. Her parents were Alexander St Barbe and Christian Maneby. Alexander ‘inherited’ his father’s position as a hoytaker with responsibility for managing the hiring and transport of merchant ships and small craft (known as ‘hoys’).

Christian was just fifteen when her father died; two years later she married Rev. Charles Henry Cooper White MA who was twenty years her senior. Rev. White has been colourfully described as “an old-fashioned parson, farmer, sportsman [and] volunteer soldier” who brewed beer and played cricket. The couple had two daughters: Eleanor born in 1803 and Christiana born in 1804. Two years later, most likely in childbirth, Christian died, aged just 21. A memorial plaque dedicated to her was erected at St Nicholas Church, Fyfield in Hampshire.

The Rev. Charles remarried in 1812 and added another daughter and two sons to the family. He was 93 when he died.

Painted by the well-listed artist Anne Mee, the portrait is set in a decorative gilt metal frame that is hinged and extensively engraved reverse with the sitter’s details and a moving tribute (see above).

Working during the early nineteenth century, Anne Mee was one of a small group of professional female miniature artists. From an early age she assisted her father, a portrait artist, in his studio but it was his unexpected death that propelled her to forge a career in miniature painting to provide for her mother and numerous siblings. Throughout her career she enjoyed Royal patronage culminating in a commission from the Prince Regent, later George IV, to paint an ambitious series of portraits of the most beautiful society ladies of the day. Following her marriage to an Irish barrister, Mrs Mee had six children. She continued to paint though, according to the diarist Joseph Farington, her husband only ‘consented to let her paint ladies only who were never to be attended [at the sittings] by gentlemen’. She exhibited intermittently at the Royal Academy between 1804 and 1837; further examples of her work can be viewed at the V. & A. Museum in London.

Ivory Exemption Ref.: HQPXXPTM