Laura Russell

Laura de Peyronnet was born in Brussells. Her mother was English and her father a French nobleman, the Vicomte de Payronnet.She studied art in Paris. In 1865, at the British Embassy in Paris, she married Lord Arthur Russell, who was M.P for Tavistock, and whose brother was the heir to the Duke of Bedford. On the visits that she and Arthur made to the family seat at Woburn, she became fascinated by the large number of portraits of Russells of every generation. She copied many of them. It was at an early point in her marriage that she accompanied Arthur on constituency business to Tavistock. The Town Hall had recently been built. As Arthur addressed his constituents from the platform of the fine, but rather bare, hall, Laura’s mind turned to the possibilitiesof decoration. The results were soon to appear in the form of ten portraits, eight of them copies and two of them originals, painted by Laura andpresented to the town. They continued to form the nucleus of the Town Hall collection. The originals are of Sir John Trelawny and Viscount Enfield. The copies include John Pym, Sir Francis Drake, and the six members of the Russell family who, together with Laura herself, mount a silent vigil here in the heart of their old borough. The talented lady outlived her husband by eighteen years and died in Londan in 1910.