Lady Mary Impey

Mary Impey (2 March 1749 – 20 February 1818) was an English natural historian and patron of the arts in Bengal.

The wife of Elijah Impey, the Chief Justice of Bengal, she established a menagerie in Calcutta and commissioned Indian artists to paint the various creatures.

Born Mary Reade in Oxfordshire, she was the eldest of the three children of John and Harriet Reade.[1] In 1768, at Hammersmith parish church (Fulham North Side) then just outside London, she married a thirty-six-year-old barrister, Elijah Impey, and over the next five years bore him four children. In 1773, Elijah Impey was made chief justice of Fort William in Bengal and the couple moved to India, leaving the children with their father's brother in Hammersmith. In 1775, having settled in Fort William, Impey started a collection of native birds and animals on the extensive gardens of the estate, which had formerly been that of Henry Vansittart, governor of Bengal from 1760 to 1764.

Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Impey

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Information on portrait

https://news.furman.edu/2012/02/20/is-the-painting-a-real-thomas-ga...

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Links to painting commissioned by Lady Impey

http://jameelcentre.ashmolean.org/collection/6980/10198

http://www.museums.ox.ac.uk/content/lady-impeys-bird-paintings

http://www.oxforddnb.com/index/66/101066116/

http://jameelcentre.ashmolean.org/collection/6980/10198