Sir William Charles Ross, Portrait of Miss Mary Pack, 1832

Chicago:

Blythe Sobol, “Sir William Charles Ross, Portrait of Miss Mary Pack, 1832,” 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. 3, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.1496.

MLA:

Sobol, Blythe. “Sir William Charles Ross, Portrait of Miss Mary Pack, 1832,” 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. 3, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024. doi: 10.37764/8322.5.1496.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

This tender portrait of a young woman was painted by Sir William Charles Ross, whose works exemplify the spirit of the Victorian age.¹ He inscribed the name of the sitter, Miss Mary Pack, and the year it was painted, 1832, on the back of the miniature, in his customary format.² Pack was born Mary Frances Pack on September 7, 1808, to Richard Pack and his wife, Mary Freeman, in London.³ The Pack family’s country home was at Flore House in Flore, Northamptonshire, built in 1608.⁴

Ross depicts Pack as a twenty-three-year-old woman on the marriage market. The three-quarters-length format enabled him to lavish detail on her clothing and background, two areas in which he excelled. Pack wears garments that are subdued in color but in a fashionable style for 1832. Her gown’s wide neckline showcases her exposed shoulders and full gigot sleeves. The filmy white fichu draped over her shoulders for modesty echoes the white ruffled lining of her high-crowned bonnet. Pink roses in her hair, which represent love in the highly codified language of flowers,⁵ highlight her beauty, youth, and marital availability. She married Richard Barnardiston Yates three years later, on February 10, 1835, in Churchover, Warwick.⁶

Pack’s appearance of freshness and vitality is emphasized by the landscape background often utilized by Ross, who preferred larger sheets of ivory to broaden the scope of his cabinet miniatures and compete with—or surpass—his competitors in oil. The size of Ross’s cabinet miniatures makes them particularly fragile and prone to breakage. The vertical crack running down the center-right of this portrait, which was painted on a single extremely thin piece of ivory, was recently repaired.⁷

Ross often added large amounts of gum arabic to the watercolor in areas where he wished to emphasize sheen and saturation, as here in the purple silk dress, blue sky, and deep green leaves. Elsewhere, he took advantage of the luminous surface of the ivory itself, using only a minimal, pale tint to create a sheer appearance in the sitter’s flesh tones and the area of the fichu where it crosses her bare shoulders. The miniature’s ornate ormolu mount, adorned with acorns and oak leaves, may have been a later addition. It was probably made by fashionable bronze and ormolu manufacturer J. A. Hatfield,⁸ who began reframing the royal collection of miniatures for Prince Albert in 1851.⁹

The later, secondary inscription on a backing card reads “to my dear Flora” and is dated 1883, the year the sitter’s husband died. The text indicates that she probably gave her portrait to her eldest daughter, Ellen Flora Yates (1834–1922),¹⁰—a poignant reminder that this miniature, like so many others, was passed on to a loved one as a token of affection.¹¹

Notes

1. “Spiritually, his miniatures breathe the bonhomie and prettiness found in Victorian portraiture at its best.” Graham Reynolds, English Portrait Miniatures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 166. The Victorian era aligns with the dates of Queen Victoria’s reign, from 1837 to 1901.

2. Vanessa Remington, “Ross, Sir William Charles,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, November 11, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/24137.

3. England, Select Births and Christenings, 1538–1975, FHL film no. 383534, digitized on ancestry.com. Her baptism and the names of her parents are recorded in the London, Church of England Parish Registers, ref. Clc/275/Ms08311/002, London Metropolitan Archives, digitized on ancestry.com.

4. On Flore House, see the will of Richard Pack of Flore House, Northamptonshire, January 22, 1839, ref. PROB 11/1905/448, National Archives, Kew.

5. While floral dictionaries are traditionally associated with the reign of Queen Victoria, they began to be published in France by 1810 and soon spread to Britain. An early example was published by Madame de Genlis, La botanique historique et littéraire . . . suivie d’une nouvelle intitulée: Les Fleurs; Ou, les Artistes (Paris: Maradan, 1810), https://wellcomecollection.org/works/g4kthsgg/items. On the history of floriography, see Beverly Seaton, The Language of Flowers: A History (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012).

6. Warwickshire County Record Office, roll Engl/2/1052, ref. DR 15, Warwickshire Anglican Registers, Warwick, digitized on ancestry.com.

7. Treatment report by Carol Aiken, April 12, 2019, NAMA curatorial files.

8. The frame appears identical to the Hatfield frame for John Cox Dillman Engleheart, Augustus Henry Morgan, 1815, Christie’s, London, “The Collector: European and English Furniture, Ceramics, Portrait Miniatures, and Works of Art,” November 13, 2019, lot 171, https://www.christies.com/zh/lot/lot-6235125. With thanks to Carol Aiken, who pointed out that this frame was most likely made by “Bronze and Ormolu Manufacturer” J. A. Hatfield of 21 Cumberland Street, London. Carol Aiken, 2018, notes in NAMA curatorial file. See also Jacob Simon, “John Ayres Hatfield,” British Bronze Sculpture Founders and Plaster Figure Makers, 1800–1980: H, National Gallery, London, 2011, https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/research/programmes/british-bronze-founders-and-plaster-figure-makers-1800-1980-1/british-sculpture-makers-h.

9. It is notable that Hatfield began advertising “miniatures repaired, painted, framed & arranged onsite” in 1886, three years after the miniature was given to the sitter’s daughter, as the inscription implies. It may have replaced an original, larger wooden frame, according to Elle Shushan, 2017; notes in NAMA curatorial file. On the large-scale reframing of the Royal Collection miniatures, 560 in all, see Jacob Simon, “John Ayres Hatfield”; and Lucy Whitaker, “‘Preparing a Handsome Picture Frame to Pattern Chosen by HRH the Prince:’ Prince Albert Frames his Collection,” Victoria and Albert in Love (London: Royal Collection Trust, 2012), 1–36, https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/11492435/lucy-whitaker-the-royal-collection#google_vignette.

10. Out of the sitter’s three children, Ellen Flora was the only one who remained unmarried in 1883. She married the Reverend Frederick Hopkins on June 2, 1887. “Marriage,” The Illustrated London News, June 18, 1887, 689.

11. Mary Yates (née Pack) died on January 24, 1898, at Southfield, in the fashionable seaside resort town of Worthing, where Oscar Wilde had written The Importance of Being Earnest in 1894. Yates left the contents of her substantial £11,131 14s. 6d. estate to her three daughters. “Yates, Mary,” National Probate Calendar (London: Principal Probate Registry, 1898), 251.

Probably commissioned from the artist by Richard Pack, Esq. (1768–1838) and Mary Freeman (1781–1859), Flore House, Northamptonshire, 1832;

Inherited by their daughter, the sitter, Mary Pack (1808–1898), Southfield House, Whatley, Somerset, by 1859–1883 [1];

Given to her daughter, Ellen Flora Barnardiston Yates (1834–1922), Southfield, Worthing, Sussex, 1883–1922 [2];

Inherited by her nephew, Vernon Bryan Crowther-Beynon (1865–1941), 1922–at least 1926 [3];

Purchased from Objects of Art and Vertue, Miniatures, Glass Paperweights, and Watches, Christie, Manson, and Woods, London, June 29, 1953, lot 29, by Danton Guérault (ca. 1893–1954), London, 1953 [4];

E. A. Davies, Esq. (d. by 1961), London [5];

Inherited by Mrs. M. Davies, by 1961;

Purchased at her sale, Important English Miniatures of the 17th, 18th, and Early 19th Centuries, Christie’s, London, May 2, 1961, lot 143, by Leggatt Brothers, London, probably on behalf of Mr. John W. (1905–2000) and Mrs. Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, 1961–1971 [6];

Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1971.

Notes

[1] While the miniature, which dates to 1832 when Mary Pack was twenty-four years old, may have been given to Pack on the occasion of her marriage to Richard Barnardiston Yates on February 10, 1835, it may also have remained with her parents until her mother’s death in 1859.

[2] The miniature’s secondary inscription records that it was gifted to “my dear Flora” in “May 1833,” shortly after the death on April 30, 1883, of the sitter’s husband, Richard Barnardiston Yates. He left a substantial personal estate of £21,882 16s. 8d. to his widow, the former Miss Mary Pack. He died at Westfield in Beckenham, Kent, the home of their son-in-law and youngest daughter Gertrude Ann Barnardiston Crowther. Probate Registry; London, England; Calendar of the Grants of Probate and Letters of Administration made in the Probate Registries of the High Court of Justice in England, 615.

Out of Mrs. Yates (née Pack)’s three children, Ellen Flora was the only one who remained unmarried in 1883 and still lived with her parents. She married the Reverend Frederick Hopkins on June 2, 1887. England, Select Marriages, 1538-1973, ref: item 5, p. 27; FHL film number 2147082.

[3] Vernon Bryan Crowther-Beynon, who was the son of Gertrude Anne Barnardiston Crowther-Beynon (1838–1936), inherited the family miniatures after the death of his aunt on December 11, 1922. See probate dated February 8, 1923, Principal Probate Registry; London, England; Calendar of the Grants of Probate and Letters of Administration made in the Probate Registries of the High Court of Justice in England. The inheritors of the estate of Ellen Flora Barnardiston Hopkins are “Vernon Bryan Crowther-Beynon and Frederick Gardnor Hopkins esquires,” her nephew and stepson.

In 1926, John Smart’s portraits of Reverend and Mrs. Yates (see note 2) were recorded by Basil Long as in the hands of “Mr. V. B. Crowther-Beynon, M.A., F.S.A.” Basil Long, “John Smart, Miniature Painter,” The Connoisseur 74, no. 296 (April 1926): 197. These miniatures are now in the collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. See John Smart, Portrait of Elizabeth Maria Yates, 1761 and Portrait of Rev. Richard Sutton Yates, 1762.

Crowther-Beynon was a longtime member of the British Numismatic Society. J. Allen, “Obituaries: Mr. V. B. Crowther-Beynon,” British Numismatic Journal 24 (1942–1944): 57, https://www.britnumsoc.org/images/PDFs/24-57.png.

[4] In the sales catalogue, the lot is described as “Portrait of Mary, daughter of Richard Pack of Flore, Northants, by Sir W. C. Ross, R.A., wearing mauve dress and large blue hat with flowers in her hair—oblong, 3 1/2 in. high—leather case.” The following lot in the sale was John Smart’s portraits of Reverend Richard Sutton Yates and his Wife, lot 30. The Smart portraits depict the great-grandparents of Mary Pack’s husband Richard Barnardiston Yates and were most likely inherited alongside the Ross miniature. The Yates portraits were purchased from the 1953 sale by the dealers Leggatt Brothers and were probably sold directly to Mr. and Mrs. Starr, while the Ross miniature, purchased by Guerault, took a more circuitous route to arrive in the Starr collection.

According to Art Prices Current, 30, August 1952–July 1953 (London: Art Trade Press, 1953), no. 3614, p. A145, “Guerault” was the buyer. This is almost certainly Danton Guérault, Esq., recorded in probate as “Pierre Henri Danton Guerault-Froc,” who collected a variety of portrait miniatures. He donated several to the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1927; for example, Thomas Hugh Redmond, A Clergyman, Possibly of the Fenton Family, ca. 1760–85, watercolor on ivory, 1 3/4 x 1 3/16 in. (3.7 x 2.9 cm), Victoria and Albert Museum, London, P.67-1927, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1070217/a-clergyman-possibly-of-the-portrait-miniature-thomas-redmond/. Guérault is described as an art dealer in “Miniatures from Spain? Story of Barcelona Escapes,” The Scotsman (Midlothian, Scotland), August 6, 1938, 16. His other posthumous sale (Christie, Manson, and Woods, London, June 23, 1954, lots 124–125) included a collection of books about famous miniature painters. Guérault died on April 15, 1954, at Hammersmith Hospital, London.

[5] E. A. Davies was a collector of portrait miniatures; see Leo Schidlof, The Miniature in Europe in the 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries (Graz: Akademische Druck, 1964), 44.

[6] According to the sales catalogue, the miniature was the property of Mrs. M. Davies, “being part of the Collection formed by The Late E. A. Davies, Esq.” The lot is described as “Miss Mary Pack, by W. C. Ross, signed and dated on the reverse, 1832, full face, against a landscape background, wearing mauve dress with white lace stole and picture hat–rectangular, 3 1/2 in. high–in ormolu frame with oak leaf border.”

According to the Art Prices Current 38 (1961), Leggatt bought the lot for £147. Archival research indicates that the Starrs purchased many miniatures from Leggatt Brothers, either directly or with Leggatt acting as their purchasing agent. See correspondence between Betty Hogg and Martha Jane Starr, May 15 and June 3, 1950, Nelson-Atkins curatorial files.

Small Wonders: The Formation of the Starr Collection of Portrait Miniatures and their Evolution as an Art Form, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, March 31, 2023–April 14, 2024, no cat.

Objects of Art and Vertue, Miniatures, Glass Paperweights, and Watches (London: Christie, Manson, and Woods, June 29, 1953), 6, as Mary, daughter of Richard Pack.

Art Prices Current 30 August 1952–July 1953 (London: Art Trade Press, 1953), no. 3614, p. A145.

Important English Miniatures of the 17th, 18th, and Early 19th Centuries (London: Christie’s, May 2, 1961), 28.

Art Prices Current 38 August 1960–July 1961 (London: Art Trade Press, 1961), no. 4152, p. A155.

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 210, p. 71, (repro.).