Susannah-Penelope Rosse, Portrait of Mary, Princess of Orange, later Mary II, ca. 1685–94

Chicago:

Blythe Sobol, “Susannah-Penelope Rosse, Portrait of Mary, Princess of Orange, later Mary II, ca. 1685–94,” catalogue entry in Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Blythe Sobol, and Maggie Keenan, The Starr Collection of Portrait Miniatures, 1500–1850: The Collections of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, vol. 2, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.1232.

MLA:

Sobol, Blythe. “Susannah-Penelope Rosse, Portrait of Mary, Princess of Orange, later Mary II, ca. 1685–94,” catalogue entry. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Blythe Sobol, and Maggie Keenan. The Starr Collection of Portrait Miniatures, 1500–1850: The Collections of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, edited by Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, vol. 2, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024. doi: 10.37764/8322.5.1232.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

This miniature by Susannah-Penelope Rosse (née Gibson) of a previously unknown woman has been identified as a portrait of Mary, Princess of Orange (1662–1694), the future Queen Mary II.¹ At the age of fifteen, Mary married her first cousin, William of Orange, a prince of the Dutch Republic. Mary’s father, James II, acceded to the throne in 1685 amid great religious and political turbulence.²

The model for this miniature was likely a full-scale oil portrait in the Royal Collection, painted in about 1685 by Willem Wissing (ca. 1656–1687), a Dutch artist who studied with court painter Sir Peter Lely (1618–1680).³ Mary’s father commissioned the oil and sent Wissing to The Hague to paint double portraits of his daughter and her husband.⁴ In the oil painting, composed in the formulaic style used for state portraits, Mary is enveloped by an ermine-trimmed red velvet robe of state, a powerful symbol of her royal lineage. Her right hand clasps a filmy veil, drawing the viewer’s gaze to the jeweled and embroidered detailing on the white lace trim of her blue velvet gown.

Although, by necessity, Rosse omitted many details in the much smaller miniature, her replication of the lace-trimmed blue gown and Mary’s ringlets, pearls, and rounded facial features indicate a clear link between the two portraits. While Rosse was better known for her copies after Samuel Cooper (ca. 1608–1672), Wissing’s portrait was widely reproduced, modified, and circulated throughout Mary’s lifetime in numerous formats. Rosse herself painted at least four miniatures of the queen, including a related example in the Clarke collection, currently on long-term loan to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, and three others described in the catalogue for the sale of Rosse’s husband’s collection after her death.⁵ While the Clarke miniature is comparatively large, allowing for a polished rendering and breadth of expression, the Nelson-Atkins portrait more faithfully replicates Mary’s attire as painted by Wissing. Other closely related miniatures after Wissing’s portrait include an unattributed double portrait of William and Mary and a version attributed to Nicholas Dixon (ca. 1645–after 1708), both in the Royal Collection.⁶ The diminutive size of the Nelson-Atkins miniature and its adaptation of Wissing’s well-known model connects it with a distinct group of Rosse’s smallest works, which were copied after large court portraits.⁷

Although she did not sit for this portrait directly, Princess Mary likely knew Rosse through the artist’s father, the miniaturist Richard Gibson (ca. 1615–1690), who was Mary’s drawing master. Gibson accompanied Mary to The Hague after her wedding in 1677 and returned to Britain with her when she became queen. He settled in Covent Garden, likely with Rosse and her husband, Michael, a prosperous court jeweler. Michael Rosse may have fashioned miniature settings for his wife, possibly including the delicately scalloped bezel closure on the period slide case of this miniature.⁸

After James II was deposed in late 1688, William and Mary were crowned King and Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland together. During her husband’s extended military campaigns, Mary was recognized as a competent ruler in her own right at a time when women, even queens, were expected to be meek and decorative consorts and wives. Through her depictions of her friends and family, and the most elevated member of her extended court circle, Queen Mary II, Rosse, too, carved a place for herself in the world, not out of financial need but rather a desire to wield her artistic talent.

Notes

1. Rosse’s name has had a number of incarnations, but according to John Murdoch, “The correct form of her name, with the final ‘h’ on Susannah and a hyphen, is given both in her father’s will and in her own burial record at St Paul’s, Covent Garden: this seems preferable to the form without the ‘h’ used by Vertue, followed by Goulding and Edmond; and it is certainly preferable to Susan Penelope, used by Long, followed by Foskett.” John Murdoch, Seventeenth-Century English Miniatures in the Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum (London: H.M. Stationery Office in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1997), 235.

2. The marriage to William, a devout Protestant, was arranged by their uncle, King Charles II, who lacked a direct heir, in hopes of appeasing his increasingly anti-Catholic subjects. They feared the accession of Charles’s staunchly Catholic brother James. See John van der Kiste, William and Mary (Cheltenham: History Press, 2008).

3. William Wissing, Mary II (1662–1694) when Princess of Orange, ca. 1687–1687, oil on canvas, 49 1/2 x 40 in. (125.8 x 102.3 cm), Royal Collection Trust, London, RCIN 405643, https://www.rct.uk/collection/search#/4/collection/405643/mary-ii-1662-94-when-princess-of-orange.

4. John Ingamells, National Portrait Gallery: Later Stuart Portraits 1685–1714 (London: National Portrait Gallery, 2009), 174.

5. Susannah-Penelope Rosse, after William Wissing, Mary II (1662–1694), bodycolor on vellum (?), ca. 1685, 3 in. (3.5 cm) high, published in Stephen Lloyd, Portrait Miniatures from the Clarke Collection (Edinburgh: Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 2001), 36–37. On Wissing’s repetitions, see Ingamells, Later Stuart Portraits, 172–74. Three portraits of Queen Mary by Rosse are listed in the April 1723 sale of Michael Rosse’s belongings, published in abridged form in Daphne Foskett, Samuel Cooper 1609–1672 (London: Faber and Faber, 1974), 100–106.

6. British School (?), William III (1650–1702) and Mary II (1662–1694), ca. 1685–1710, watercolor on vellum, 1 x 7/8 in. (2.5 x 2.2 cm), RCIN 422092, https://www.rct.uk/collection/search#/1/collection/422092/william-iii-1650-1702-and-mary-ii-1662-1694; and Nicholas Dixon (?), Mary II (1662–1694), ca. 1685–1694, watercolor on vellum, 2 4/5 x 2 1/3 in. (7.1 x 5.8 cm), RCIN 420147, https://www.rct.uk/collection/search#/1/collection/420147/mary-ii-1662-1694.

7. As Catharine MacLeod has observed, Rosse’s miniatures that are likely painted from life are intimate but larger-scale depictions of her family and friends, in contrast to her tiny miniatures copied after large oil-on-canvas portraits of courtiers and royalty. Catharine MacLeod and Julia Marciari Alexander, Painted Ladies: Women at the Court of Charles II (London: National Portrait Gallery, 2001), 186.

8. The Rosses’ home on Henrietta Street was the former residence of Samuel Cooper; Peter Crosse lived nearby on Henrietta as well. There is only circumstantial evidence that Michael Rosse created settings for his wife’s miniatures, but it is probable, considering his profession. Murdoch, Seventeenth-Century English Miniatures, 235. According to Carol Aiken and Elle Shushan, the slide case is quite early and may be original to the miniature; concerns about damaging the delicately scalloped bezel closure have prevented conservators from opening it for cleaning. Elle Shushan, conversations with Aimee Marcereau DeGalan and Katelyn Crawford, March 27–31, 2017; Carol Aiken, conversations with Aimee Marcereau DeGalan and Katelyn Crawford, May 30–June 2, 2017, Nelson-Atkins curatorial files.

Possibly Susannah-Penelope Rosse (ca. 1655–1700) and Michael Rosse (1650–1735), London, by 1700;

Possibly purchased from Michael Rosse’s sale, London, April 1723 [1];

With Mr. John W. (1905–2000) and Mrs. Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, by 1958;

Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1958.

Notes

[1] Three portraits of Queen Mary by Rosse are listed in the multi-part April 1723 sale of Michael Rosse’s belongings, published in abridged form in Daphne Foskett, Samuel Cooper 1609–1672 (London: Faber and Faber, 1974), 100–106. Lot 63, sold on April 3, 1723, was described as “2, King William and Queen Mary, by Mrs. Rosse”. Lot 199, dating to the fourth day of the second portion of the sale which began on April 26, is described as “Queen Mary, ditto [by Mrs. Rosse].” Lot 248, sold on the fifth day of the second sale, is described as “2, King William and Queen Mary, ditto [by Mrs. Rosse].” It is possible, but not provable, that the Nelson-Atkins miniature could have been sold in one of these lots.

William Wissing, Mary II (1662–94) when Princess of Orange, ca. 1685, oil on canvas, 49 1/2 x 40 in. (125.9 x 101.9 cm), Royal Collection Trust, London.

Susannah-Penelope Rosse, after William Wissing, Mary II (1662–1694), bodycolor on vellum (?), ca. 1685, 3 in. (3.5 cm) high, Clarke collection, Scotland.

The Starr Foundation Collection of Miniatures, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, December 8, 1972–January 14, 1973, no cat., no. 16, as Unknown Lady.

Ross E. Taggart, ed., Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 265, as Unknown Lady.

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 16, p. 12, (repro.), as Unknown Lady.

Daphne Foskett, Samuel Cooper 1609–1672 (London: Faber and Faber, 1974), 100–06.