England, 18th century / 1784
Portrait of Lady Grace Anna Newenham
The Cleveland Museum of Art catalogs Portrait of Lady Grace Anna Newenham as portrait miniature (England, 18th century · 1784).
Human hair was frequently incorporated into miniatures and was especially appropriate for mourning miniatures because it transformed the object into a kind of reliquary.
A CLOSER LOOK
The museum identifies this portrait miniature as watercolor on ivory and credits Horace Hone (British, 1756–1825).
The museum's collection notes: Lady Grace Anna Newenham (née Burton, 1725–1807) was the wife of Sir Edward Newenham (1734–1814), a prominent radical Protestant Irish politician and MP for Dublin, whom she married in 1754 at St. Thomas in Dublin. Lady Newenham herself came from a highly influential family with deep Whig political roots in Dublin. This miniature was painted in 1784, when she was nearly 60 years old and had been married for 30 years. This period found her husband, Edward, deeply in debt, going to great lengths to secure employment for his children, and planning a trip to America. While the former conditions would not encourage an artistic expenditure, the lat
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The Cleveland Museum of ArtPortrait of Lady Grace Anna NewenhamOriginal explanation based on the sources above. Images carry their own reuse terms.