Matching family tree profiles for Sophia Elisabeth Prinsep
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About Sophia Elisabeth Prinsep
Born November 16 1760, British Factory Chaplaincy, Lisbon
This lady introduced the name "Auriol" into the Prinsep family, and its descendant branches.Sophia (Sophie) was born into a French Huguenot family. Her father was Jacques Auriol, probably anglicised to James, who had moved from Castres in Langue d'Oc, France to Lisbon, possibly to stay with his uncle. He met an Englishwoman Charlotte Russell and started their family in Lisbon. Sophia had several siblings. The Auriols migrated to London and Sophie and several if not all her brothers and sisters moved again to Bengal in the 1780's. There Sophia met a friend of her brother James, John Prinsep, an up and coming entrepreneur in the textile industry. Sophia and John were married at Calcutta. The Prinseps founded a distinguished dynasty firstly in Bengal and then later spreading out into imperial India.
There is a splendid formal portrait, the Auriol and Dashwood Families, by the distinguished painter Johan Zoffany, painted c. 1783 - 1787 of Sophia, her sister Charlotte Louisa, brothers Charles, John Lewis and James Peter Auriol, together with her husband John Prinsep and brother-in-law Thomas Dashwood, and servants, presumably in the garden of their Calcutta home. The painting is currently displayed at the Holburne Museum in Bath. Details below: -
"Johan Zoffany (1733-1810)
The Auriol and Dashwood Families, c. 1783-7
Oil on canvas, 142 x 198 cm
His informal conversation piece of the Auriol family with their friends and servants is a fascinating glimpse into the private world of colonial life in 1780s Bengal. Five children of James Auriol, a Huguenot merchant from Hampstead, travelled to Calcutta in the 1770s and 80s to seek their fortunes. This tea party under a jackfruit tree is probably set in the garden of James Peter Auriol, the first brother to arrive, in 1770. By the time of this portrait, he had risen through the ranks of the East India Company to become Secretary of the Governing Council of Bengal, and had earned enough to return home to England on a very comfortable income. Charles was a Captain in the King’s army, and John also became a civil servant. Their sister Sophia (in pink) found her fortune in John Prinsep (seated on the left), who established the indigo and cotton-printing industries in Bengal and became immensely rich. Meanwhile, Charlotte Auriol married Thomas Dashwood (depicted playing chess), who was in charge of stationery supplies.
In India the family was able to live in great comfort with a huge number of household servants, just a few of whom are depicted here: one is refilling Mr Prinsep’s hookah with tobacco, while a second pours hot water into the ladies’ silver teapot, which is held by a young boy. This boy may have been a slave of John Auriol’s known as Nabob. On the right, a courier brings a letter to James Auriol, watched by an accountant.
The painting commemorates the marriage of Charlotte and Sophia Auriol in 1782, and the return of James and Charles to England in 1783, leaving their sisters safe in their friends’ hands. It shows us how the fashionable British way of life, cultivated in Bath and other cities, carried on as normal in the heat of the subcontinent: the gentlemen smoke and play chess in their wigs and breeches and the tight-laced and powdered ladies enjoy their tea and gossip in the shade of parkland trees. Charlotte is wearing a pair of bracelets set with miniatures, perhaps portraits of the sisters she has left behind in England.
Zoffany must have begun the portrait very soon after arriving in Calcutta in September 1783. His work was going out of fashion in London and he hoped to do better among the British in India. In Bengal he was abundantly welcomed with commissions from officials of the East India Company, beginning with Governor General Warren Hastings. He later travelled further afield to paint both Indian princes and local landscapes and wildlife. Zoffany’s success overseas enabled him to return to London and the prospect of a comfortable old age in 1789.
The loan of the Dashwood conversation piece will bring the Holburne’s number of paintings by Zoffany to seven, the largest public collection of Zoffany’s work outside London.
Published on: 29/08/2013"
The other possible siblings are Emanuela Anna Olympia Auriol, Amelia Emily Auriol (later Hay-Drummond)
John and Sophia's children were William, Amelia Rebecca, Henry Thoby, James, Augustus and Charles Robert Prinsep.
Stephen, Dominic, Auriol and Jemima Rae are direct descendants of Sophia and John Prinsep through their son William.
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Sophia Elisabeth Prinsep's Timeline
| 1760 |
March 20, 1760
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Lisbon, Portugal
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| 1783 |
1783
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| 1784 |
1784
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| 1788 |
1788
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Calcutta, India
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| 1789 |
March 28, 1789
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Westminster, London, England (United Kingdom)
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1789
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| 1790 |
1790
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| 1792 |
July 15, 1792
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Chelmsford, Essex, England (United Kingdom)
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| 1794 |
August 11, 1794
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London, England (United Kingdom)
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