Mrs Harper & Baby Cathe

Samuel Shelley (1756-1808) was particularly celebrated for his portraits of ladies and children and this double portrait of a mother and child in a romanticised setting with red drapes and a hint of a garden landscape richly shows why Shelley became one of the most fashionable miniaturists of his day. He loved to experiment with group portraiture and with backgrounds. This portrait was completed towards the end of his career in 1807 and depicts Mrs Harper in an empire-line dress and cornflower blue wrap seated with her eldest daughter wearing a pretty lace cap and coral necklace. Given the very young age of the child, it would surely have been a challenging sitting for the artist.

The eldest daughter of Thomas Hinckley, Catharine was born in Lichfield in 1779. She married Robert John Harper of the Duchy of Lancaster Office in 1802. Born in 1807, the year of this portrait, Catherine Anne was their first daughter. The poet Anna Seward dedicated a poem to ‘Little Catherine Harper Aged Three Years, Presenting her with a Blue Sattin [sic] Bonnet’ in which she lauds her ‘dear blue eyes [and] flaxen hair’.

The portrait is signed in full on the reverse of the ivory –

Designed and painted by Samuel Shelley. Mrs Harper and her eldest daughter Cathe painted 1807 – George Street, Hanr Square.

It is further signed on the backing board within the frame and yet again on the external backing paper.

The portrait is handsomely set behind convex glass in the original deeply recessed and ornate giltwood frame. The frame is heavy and has suffered a couple of old but very minor losses; it remains overall in excellent (although somewhat dusty) condition. The portrait is accompanied by a single-page manuscript letter, possibly addressed to the artist, from George Jackson of 113 Jermyn Street. This was discovered folded up behind the backing board. Curiously this address was a butcher’s shop in 1807 though there would also have been gentlemen’s lodgings over the shop.

Largely self-taught, Samuel Shelley entered the Royal Academy Schools at the age of seventeen and exhibited widely between 1772 and 1804. His death in December 1808 after a short illness was announced in the London papers without fanfare.

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