George Engleheart, Portrait of a Woman, Possibly Elizabeth, Lady Blunt, ca. 1786

Chicago:

Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, “George Engleheart, Portrait of a Woman, Possibly Elizabeth, Lady Blunt, ca. 1786,” 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/10.37764/8322.5.1387.

MLA:

Marcereau DeGalan, Aimee. “George Engleheart, Portrait of a Woman, Possibly Elizabeth, Lady Blunt, ca. 1786,” 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: 10.37764/8322.5.1387.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

The enigmatic gaze of the woman featured in this George Engleheart miniature intensifies its connection to a love story that surpasses the limitations of space and time. The sitter bears considerable resemblance to Elizabeth, Lady Blunt (1745–1836), whom Engleheart painted on at least three occasions.¹ This connection emerges through the sitter’s distinctive features, such as her long, prominent nose, pursed lips, and arched kohl eyebrows set over large blue eyes. Notable similarities with confirmed portraits of Lady Blunt, particularly one painted in 1786, formerly in the collection of Sir Bruce M. Seton, 8th Baronet (Fig. 1), and another realized in 1794 (Fig. 2),² suggest the possibility of the Nelson-Atkins picture being an autograph copy of the 1786 version.

Born on September 12, 1745, to Richard Peers, alderman of London, and Anna Sophia Symons in St. Michael Queenhithe, London, the young Elizabeth Peers married Sir Charles William Blunt (1731–1802), 3rd Baronet of the City of London, when she was eighteen years old.³ Their union, forged at St. George’s Church in London on July 22, 1764, endured the challenges of Lord Blunt’s ventures to India and the separation that ensued.⁴ Having run through his family’s fortune, Lord Blunt was recommended to Warren Hastings, Governor-General of Bengal, for a position within the Honourable East India Company in 1783.⁵ The Blunts had nine, possibly ten children, including six daughters, and Lord Blunt was in need of patronage to support his large family. Hastings and his wife, also named Elizabeth, gave Lord Blunt the post of agent for the supply of army bullocks, and he also obtained a share in the Post Office.⁶ With employment secured, Lord Blunt set off for India, and Lady Blunt remained steadfast, bearing the weight of raising a large family and managing their estate alone.

According to Engleheart’s “fee books,” he painted at least fifteen miniatures of members of the Blunt family between 1785 and 1812.⁷ Lady Blunt is recorded as having sat for the artist in 1786, 1796, and 1800; however, the retrospective compilation of Engleheart’s fee books raises questions about its completeness, evident in discrepancies between recorded sittings and known portrait inscriptions.⁸ In any case, members of the extended Blunt family—including its matriarch, Lady Blunt, who would have been about forty years old at the time the Nelson-Atkins portrait was likely realized—were frequent patrons of George Engleheart.

The present sitter appears middle-aged. She is dressed in a white cotton wrap dress with a variation on a Medici collar that creates diaphanous layers of fabric against her milky white skin. Her powdered hair extends horizontally (as opposed to the extreme verticality of the late 1770s) in a halo of frizzled curls surrounding her face. She wears a black ribbon around a top section of hair that forms a type of mob cap, adorned with pearls. On the basis of style, dress, and the Seton portrait, the present miniature can be dated to around 1786. This date aligns with the middle period of Engleheart’s career, characterized by confident handling and fluent brushwork. The meticulous details of the sitter’s attire and Engleheart’s controlled linear style—evident in the thick contour lines that extend from her eyebrow down the bridge of her nose, as well as in an exaggerated shadow appearing at the tip of her downturned nose—showcase his artistic prowess.

The year 1786 also coincides with a poignant chapter in the Blunt love story. Lord Blunt’s departure to India in 1784, commemorated by his own likeness done by Thomas Hickey,⁹ left the couple separated for extended periods. Their possible exchange of these portraits, perhaps tokens of love, transcends the objects themselves and captures the essence of a connection that withstood the test of distance and time. Lord Blunt died in Calcutta in 1802 at age seventy-two, and Elizabeth passed away on January 17, 1836, in Croydon, Surrey, aged ninety. She lived her last thirty-four years as a widow, with his portraits, and their children, as reminders of their enduring union.¹⁰

Notes

1. According to what was known as George Engleheart’s “fee book,” a Lady Blunt sat for Engleheart in 1786, 1796, and 1800. See George Williamson and Henry Lewis Dillman Engleheart, George Engleheart 1750–1829: Miniature Painter to George III (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1902), 87–89. Not all of these pictures can be traced, including George Engleheart, Lady Blunt, 1786, watercolor on ivory, (former) Collection of Sir Bruce M. Seton, 8th Baronet, present location unknown. Furthermore, as has been published by Carmela Arturi and Frederick Roger Phillips, George Engleheart and His Nephew John Cox Dillman Engleheart (Hampshire, UK: Portrait Miniatures Club, 2016), 78, Engleheart’s fee book has been called into question. See also n. 8 below.

2. George Engleheart, Lady Blunt, née Peers, 1794, watercolor on ivory, 3 in. (7.6 cm) high, was featured in Centuries of Style: Silver, European Ceramics, Glass, Portrait Miniatures and Gold Boxes, Christie’s, London, November 29, 2011, lot 121; however, it went unsold. The Nelson-Atkins sitter also resembles Lady Blunt’s brother, Richard Peers Symons. See Sir Joshua Reynolds, Richard Peers Symons, M. P. (Later Baronet), oil on canvas, 1770–71, 93 1/2 x 57 1/2 in. (237.5 x 146.1 cm), Cincinnati Art Museum, 1991.62, https://www.cincinnatiartmuseum.org/art/explore-the-collection?id=11299330.

3. Blunt was the grandson of Sir John Blunt, who was a financier and infamous founder of the South Sea Company. He was also the famous perpetrator of the South Sea Bubble, which came crashing down in 1721, a year after the Blunt baronetcy was created. For more on this event, see John Carswell, The South Sea Bubble, rev. ed. (Dover, NH: Alan Sutton, 1993), 19, 157–58, 258, 275. For Lord Blunt’s peerage, see George Edward Cokayne, ed., The Complete Baronetage (Gloucester, UK: Alan Sutton, 1900; repr. 1983), 5:50.

4. Their engagement occasioned the commission of her marriage portrait by George Romney, Elizabeth, Lady Blunt, ca. 1764, oil on canvas, 49 1/2 x 40 1/2 in. (125.7 x 102.9 cm), Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 96.1209, https://emuseum.mfah.org/objects/35027/elizabeth-lady-blunt, which shows her wearing a classically inspired white satin gown, leaning against a plinth with a bust of a philosopher and set of scrolled papers—symbols of her erudition and refinement.

5. Sir Evan Cotton, Calcutta Old and New: A Historical and Descriptive Handbook to the City (Calcutta: W. Newman, 1907), 514.

6. Cotton, Calcutta Old and New, 514.

7. Williamson notes that “the year 1785 opens with more of the ladies of the Blunt family, that famous family of lovely daughters, all of whom were painted by Engleheart, and all of whom made such notable marriages.” See Williamson and Engleheart, George Engleheart, 26.

8. Alan Derbyshire discovered a watermark “1805” on the paper of Engleheart’s fee book, indicating its later compilation date. He suggests the list was compiled from a number of Engleheart’s notebooks and scraps of paper that he used over the years and written up later to produce a detailed account of his career. See Carmela Arturi and Frederick Roger Phillips, George Engleheart and His Nephew John Cox Dillman Engleheart (Hampshire, UK: Portrait Miniatures Club, 2016), 78. One discrepancy in the so-called fee book is that Elizabeth is not listed under the year 1794; however, there is a known portrait of her by Engleheart (see Fig. 2), which is inscribed on the backing card, “April 11th, 1794.”

9. See Thomas Hickey, Sir Charles William Blunt, 3rd Baronet (1731–1802), ca. 1788, oil on copper, 10 1/2 x 8 1/2 in. (26.7 x 21.6 cm), Paul Mellon Center, London photo archives, PA-F07760-0003, https://photoarchive.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/objects/471273.

10. Charles Mosley, ed., Burke’s Peerage, Baronetage, and Knightage, 107th ed. (Wilmington, DE: Burke’s Peerage [Genealogical Books Ltd.], 2003), 1:410.

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.

George Romney, Elizabeth, Lady Blunt, ca. 1764, oil on canvas, 49 1/2 x 40 1/2 in. (125.7 x 102.9 cm), Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 96.1209.

George Engleheart, Lady Blunt, 1786, watercolor on ivory, previously in the collection of Sir Bruce M. Seton, 8th Baronet, current location unknown.

George Engleheart, Lady Blunt, née Elizabeth Peers, 1794, 1794, watercolor on ivory, 3 in. (7.6 cm) high, repro. in Centuries of Style: Silver, European Ceramics, Glass, Portrait Miniatures and Gold Boxes, Christie’s, London, November 29, 2011, lot 121.

George Engleheart, Portrait of Miss Elizabeth Blunt, later Lady Burrell Blount, 1800, watercolor and bodycolor on ivory, 3 1/8 x 2 1/2 in. (8 x 6.3 cm), sold at The Pohl-Ströher Collection of Portrait Miniatures Part I, Sotheby’s, London, December 6, 2018, lot 64.

George Engleheart, Portrait of Elizabeth Blunt, late 18th–early 19th century, watercolor on ivory or card, 2 5/8 x 2 1/16 in. (6.6 x 5.3 cm), Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, WA1942.3.

George Williamson and Henry Lewis Dillman Engleheart, George Engleheart 1750–1829: Miniature Painter to George III (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1902), 87–89.

Martha Jane and John W. Starr, “Collecting Portrait Miniatures,” Antiques 80, no. 5 (November 1961): no. 15, p. 441, (repro.), as Portrait of a Lady.

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 73, p. 27, (repro.), as Unknown Lady.