![[Maria Gunning] The Right Hon.ble Maria Countess of Coventry.](jpegs/42089.jpg)
[Maria Gunning] The Right Hon.ble Maria Countess of Coventry.
Liotard Pinx.t.
London, Printed for Rob.t Sayer, No. 53 in Fleet Street [c.1760].
Mezzotint, platemark 150 x 115mm (6 x 4½"); large margins. Tipped into album sheet.
Maria Coventry [née Gunning], countess of Coventry (bap.1732-d.1760), figure of scandal. After a childhood in Ireland, Maria and her sister Elizabeth arrived in London as teenagers and aroused considerable interest in fashionable society (they were nicknamed 'the Beauties' and admired by George II). Both quickly married well: Elizabeth to the duke of Hamilton (in secret) and Maria to George William Coventry, sixth earl of Coventry (1722-1809), the grandest landowner in Worcestershire. In London Lady Coventry's activities were documented in many private diaries and letters (Horace Walpole seems to have been particularly interested by her) and her portrait was painted by several leading artists; she also quarrelled regularly in public with her husband. Lady Coventry died at the age of twenty-eight in 1760, supposedly from lead poisoning from the fashionable white cosmetic, ceruse, which she used on her face, although tuberculosis has also been thought responsible. Mezzotint engraving of a detail from a pastel drawing by Jean-Etienne Liotard (1750-55, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam).
[Ref: 42089] £160.00
London, Printed for Rob.t Sayer, No. 53 in Fleet Street [c.1760].
Mezzotint, platemark 150 x 115mm (6 x 4½"); large margins. Tipped into album sheet.
Maria Coventry [née Gunning], countess of Coventry (bap.1732-d.1760), figure of scandal. After a childhood in Ireland, Maria and her sister Elizabeth arrived in London as teenagers and aroused considerable interest in fashionable society (they were nicknamed 'the Beauties' and admired by George II). Both quickly married well: Elizabeth to the duke of Hamilton (in secret) and Maria to George William Coventry, sixth earl of Coventry (1722-1809), the grandest landowner in Worcestershire. In London Lady Coventry's activities were documented in many private diaries and letters (Horace Walpole seems to have been particularly interested by her) and her portrait was painted by several leading artists; she also quarrelled regularly in public with her husband. Lady Coventry died at the age of twenty-eight in 1760, supposedly from lead poisoning from the fashionable white cosmetic, ceruse, which she used on her face, although tuberculosis has also been thought responsible. Mezzotint engraving of a detail from a pastel drawing by Jean-Etienne Liotard (1750-55, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam).
[Ref: 42089] £160.00