Mary Anne

Dating to around 1790, this sensitively painted portrait shows Mary Anne Cotgrave as a young girl with soulful brown eyes and long strawberry blonde curls secured with a bandeau.

Mary Anne was born in Chester in 1777 to Major John Cotgrave and his wife Mary Vigors. Most of Mary Anne’s life was spent in India where her father was stationed as an officer in the Madras Engineers. It was in Mumbai that she married Robert Honner in 1797. The couple had four sons and four daughters. Tragedy struck the family though in 1821: first Mary Anne’s mother-in-law died at sea in May of that year; the following month her second son, Henry Vigors, a midshipman in the Bombay Marine, died of cholera, aged 15; and just two months later on 28 August 1821, Mary Anne herself at the age of 40 died at sea off Cape Verde en route to Australia. Another daughter, Fanny, was to die two years later in Hobart Town, aged just 19.

The portrait is set in a decorative silver gilt frame with a later engraved backing which reads:

The portrait of Mary Anne Honner,
who died at Sea off Cape Verd August 26th 1821.
TO Augustus Cotgrave Honner,
from his Niece Mary Ann Manson
Septr 10th 1852

Augustus Cotgrave was Mary Anne’s brother.

Recent research has revealed that Henry Jacob Burch was born in 1762 and so was seventeen years old when he entered the Royal Academy Schools. He married Elizabeth Beresford in December 1784 at the Paris Church of St Marylebone. The land tax records of 1789 list him as a seal engraver working with an apprentice in Soho so miniature painting was likely not his main source of income. He exhibited between 1787 and 1834.

Ivory Exemption Ref.: PJQ4BX5S