Catherine Brouncker

portrait details Catherine (Brouncker) Adye, later Catherine Willett Date: 1784-1785 Maker: George Romney , British, 1734-1802 Sitter:Sitter: Catherine (Brouckner) Adye, later Catherine Willett , British, 1762 - 1798 Dimensions: 30 x 25 in. (76.2 x 63.5 cm.) Medium: oil on canvas Credit Line: The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens

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St Kitts Source: http://emuseum.huntington.org/view/objects/asitem/People$00403326/0...

Marriage to John Willett Adye aka Willett178022 Aug Age: 18London, England From: http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1790-1820/member/wi...; also - she married one of the closest friends of her stepfather, John Stanley. http://emuseum.huntington.org

Death179810 Oct Age: 36Plumstead, Kent, England From: http://emuseum.huntington.org/view/objects/asitem/People$00403326/0...

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Catherine (Brouncker) Adye, later Catherine Willett

Date: 1784-1785
Maker: George Romney , British, 1734-1802
Sitter:Sitter: Catherine (Brouckner) Adye, later Catherine Willett , British, 1762 - 1798

Dimensions: 30 x 25 in. (76.2 x 63.5 cm.)

Medium: oil on canvas

Credit Line: The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens

Object Number: 22.56

Label Text: Catherine Brouncker was born at St. Christophers, West Indies, in 1762, the eldest of four children of Henry Brouncker (d. 1769) and his second wife Susanna Feuilleteau (1741-1808). Her father, Collector of His Majesty's Customs at Basseterre, died on passage to England when she was seven, leaving her a legacy of £5,000. In 1773 her mother married John Stanley (1740-1799) of St. Christophers and Shooters Hill, Kent, then Solicitor General (later Attorney General) of the Leeward Islands. Catherine moved to Stanley's house in Queen Anne Street, Cavendish Square, London, and on August 20, 1780 married one of his closest friends, John Willett Adye (1745-1815) of Dean Street, Soho, the second son of Clara Payne and Stephen Payne Adye of St. Christophers. He had long benefited from the generosity and protection of his older cousin Ralph Willett (1719-1795), an art collector and bibliophile who had inherited an enormous West Indian sugar fortune in 1740. Willett was also first cousin and benefactor of Catherine's stepfather, and she made him godfather of her daughter, Annabella (1781-1795), named for his deceased wife. She again honored him in naming her two sons, John Willett (1784-1839) and Henry Ralph (1786-1857). On Ralph Willett's death in January 1795, John Willett Adye inherited the bulk of his estate (including Merly House, near Wimborne, Dorsetshire) on condition that he assume the surname of Willett, which he did by royal license on 28 February 1795. Following a long illness, Catherine Willett died at Plumstead on October 10, 1798, aged thirty-six. The following year her husband erected a monument in her memory, sculpted by John Bacon, R.A., in the chapel at Great Canford, Dorset. In this portrait, Romney made the most of his twenty-two-year-old sitter's enticing charms. Cocking her head at a fetching angle, she turns to fix us with an unabashedly direct gaze, which the artist has made more alluring by veiling her eyes in shadow--an effect repeated by other artists (such as Henry Raeburn), and possibly inspired by Reynolds's portrait Catherine Moore of 1752 (Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood). In the present work, the shadow is cast by a fashionably oversized straw hat, garnished with looped silk ribbon and trailing a striped muslin veil. The darkness of the upper part of her face allows Romney to spotlight the lower part, adding particular emphasis to the full curves of her red lips. Romney was simultaneously employing this effect in a painting of his beloved Emma Hart. Although he repeated the pivoting head and shadowed gaze in subsequent portraits, none of them matches the seductive appeal of the two works in the Huntington collection. Romney's presentation of Catherine Adye gains panache from her fashionable outdoor costume. Her cloak (known as a pelisse) is made of the same pale pink silk that embellishes her hat, and lined and edged with dark fur. The bold contrast of pink and black was much admired in eighteenth-century dress and Romney often made use of it. Here, the dramatic zigzag created by the fur edging is extended upward through the diagonal lines of the hat. The slashing black lines of the fur contrast with the softness of other areas (such as the white curves of the sitter's bosom), its ampleness exaggerated by the starched linen fichu, and the fullness of her lightly powdered coiffure, teased out about the face and terminating in loose curls around the neck. The costume is completed by plain gold pendant earrings and a pair of long brown leather gloves, which emerge through slits in the sides of the pelisse. The ensemble conveys an impression of complacent luxury, but the bold linear patterning of the composition and the vigorous strokes of the artist's brush (most evident in the silk pelisse) charge the picture with energy. This portrait may have been occasioned by the birth of Catherine Adye's first son in April 1784; it was presumably well advanced by August 4, when her husband paid Romney £21. Romney had already painted the Adyes' benefactor Ralph Willett (numerous sittings are recorded from 1780-83), and he rapidly became the painter of choice in their extended family circle. Catherine Adye's sister sat to Romney for a full-length between 1782 and 1787, and in 1790 for a three-quarter length portrait that was never finished. In 1789 Adye's three children sat for a full-length group portrait, while her husband sat for a bust-length. In 1790 her stepfather paid Romney eighty guineas for a second portrait of Catherine Adye, a full-length which repeats the beguiling treatment of the tilted head, partly shaded by a hat brim. This conscious allusion to the Huntington portrait suggests the high regard in which it was held by the painter and his patrons. Dependence on Romney as their preferred family portraitist did not interfere with the Adyes' enthusiasm for other British artists. At Joshua Reynolds's posthumous studio sale, Catherine's husband, John Willett Willett (the former John Willett Adye) acquired The Strawberry Girl and St. John the Baptist in the Wilderness. He subsequently added many other important works to the collection he inherited from Ralph Willett. When a sharp financial decline forced him to sell the bulk of his collection in 1813, 128 lots of paintings, chiefly Old Masters, realized more than £7,438, one of the largest and most lucrative picture sales of the period. The Willetts retained their family portraits as long as possible and commissioned copies of the works they were forced to sell. Joseph Duveen (who sold the present portrait to Henry E. Huntington in 1922) acquired a very good copy for his own personal collection --an eloquent testimonial to the picture's charm.

source http://emuseum.huntington.org/view/objects/asitem/search$0040/0?t:s...

Other References

• Burke, Bernard, Sir. A genealogical and heraldic history of the landed gentry of Great Britain & Ireland 6th ed. London : Harrison 1879. Vol I. page 202