Nathaniel Hone, Portrait of Mary de Cardonnel, Countess Talbot, 1743

Chicago:

Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, “Nathaniel Hone, Portrait of Mary de Cardonnel, Countess Talbot, 1743,” 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: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.1426.

MLA:

Marcereau DeGalan, Aimee. “Nathaniel Hone, Portrait of Mary de Cardonnel, Countess Talbot, 1743,” 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: 10.37764/8322.5.1426

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

In 1743, Mary de Cardonnel (1718/1719–1787) sat for this miniature portrait for Nathaniel Hone. Notwithstanding her calm, cool, and reserved demeanor—as evidenced by her nearly expressionless countenance—her life was falling apart.

Mary de Cardonnel was born around 1719 as the daughter of the Rt. Hon. Adam de Cardonnel of Bedhampton Park. She was the family’s sole heir. In 1734, a marriage was brokered between the young Mary, then fifteen, and William Talbot,¹ a move that came with substantial financial and real estate gains.² But Talbot was a known rake, and their union was doomed from the start. The couple settled at Barrington Park, a Palladian villa in Gloucestershire, and had two children: a daughter, Cecil de Cardonnel, and a son, William, who died in infancy in 1739. The second childbirth proved arduous, and Lord Talbot later claimed that “the midwife had told him that if Mary had any more children, it would kill her.”³ Consequently, he sought solace in extramarital affairs, alleging that he had been “deprived of her sexual services.”⁴

In February of 1740, Frances Somerset, the Duchess of Beaufort, who was in a childless and strained marriage, crossed paths with the lusty Lord Talbot.⁵ Both young, robust, self-absorbed, and audacious, they were swiftly captivated by each other and ignited a fiery affair that blazed within mere months of their first meeting.⁶ She became pregnant, and their dalliances could no longer be concealed. Somerset’s husband, the Duke of Beaufort, initiated divorce proceedings for alleged adultery, which led to the couple’s separation in 1742⁷ and divorce in 1744.⁸

Naturally distraught, Lady Talbot hoped that an informal separation might allow things to cool off between Lord Talbot and Somerset; however, he refused to stop seeing her. He threatened that if Lady Talbot did not grant him a formal separation, she could lose everything. He presented her with an ultimatum, offering an annuity in the form of the Barrington Estate, with a small settlement, if she agreed to separate.⁹

As if to publicly declare her answer, she had a full-length portrait of herself done by Allan Ramsay (Scottish, 1713–1784) in 1742, striding the grounds of Barrington alone.¹⁰ A year later, she commissioned from Nathaniel Hone the present miniature, inscribed on the backing card with the artist’s initials and the date 1743.¹¹ It presents Lady Talbot in a blue Van Dyck–style dress with ribbon-slashed sleeves and white lace trim. The front of the dress is adorned with pearls, which also appear in her hair and her pendant earrings.

Despite the technical difficulties of painting on enamel, this portrait is crisply executed. Hone uses minute stippling in painting the shaded areas of the face. The pinkish stipple toward the edges of her hair recalls the technique employed by Christian Friedrich Zincke (German, ca. 1684–1767) in his enamels. Dark spots near the edge of her bodice are kiln dust from the firing process.

In addition to navigating the hardships of life as a single mother, Lady Talbot now also had to contend with the upkeep of a large estate. She threw herself into the development of the grounds around Barrington Park.¹² Upon her death in 1787,¹³ her daughter, Cecil, inherited Barrington and was granted by royal license the right to adopt her maternal surname, de Cardonnel, in accordance with her mother’s will.¹⁴ Thus, Lady Talbot emerged as the triumphant heroine of her own life story.

Notes

1. Talbot was the son of Charles Talbot, 1st Baron Talbot of Hensol, and Cecil Matthews. Cracroft’s Peerage: The Complete Guide to the British Peerage and Baronetage, February 23, 2003, http://www.cracroftspeerage.co.uk/talbot1761.htm.

2. Adam de Cardonnel also held the position of Secretary of State for War, which further bolstered their prospects. Paula Watson and Sonya Wynne, “Cardonnel, Adam de (1663–1719), of Duke St., St. Margaret’s Westminster,” in The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1690–1715, ed. D. Hayton, E. Cruickshanks, and S. Handley (London: Boydell and Brewer, 2002), https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1690-1715/member/cardonnel-adam-de-1663-1719. See also Stephen McEntee’s excellent and thoroughly researched “Barrington Park, Gloucestershire,” February 11, 2019, Handed On (blog), https://handedon.wordpress.com/2019/02.

3. Lord Talbot quoted in Lawrence Stone, “Beaufort v. Beaufort: The Impotent Duke and the Adulterous Duchess, 1729–1742,” in Broken Lives: Separation and Divorce in England, 1660–1857 (London: Oxford University Press, 1993), 119.

4. Lord Talbot quoted in Stone, “Beaufort v. Beaufort,” 119.

5. Stone, “Beaufort v. Beaufort,” 118.

6. As an unspoken rule among high society, indiscretion was forgivable, but public adultery was not. Frances gave birth to a daughter on September 13, 1741, whom she named Fanny Mathews to hide her identity. This news eventually reached her husband, the Duke of Beaufort. See Stone, “Beaufort v. Beaufort,” 127–28. William Talbot’s will of 1782 mentions his daughter Cecil but also “my very dear daughter, Miss Fanny Talbot, now living with me”; cited in Sarah Murdon, “A Very Messy and Public Divorce—Beaufort v Beaufort,” All Things Georgian (blog), March 28, 2022, https://georgianera.wordpress.com/2022/03/28/a-very-public-and-messy-divorce-beaufort-v-beaufort.

7. For a full account of this contentious divorce, which involved Frances Somerset leveling claims of impotency against her husband, the Duke of Beaufort, and his court-ordered need to prove otherwise, see Stone, “Beaufort v. Beaufort,” 117–38.

8. The Duke of Beaufort managed to prove he was not impotent, thus winning his case, which gave him damages and costs of eighty thousand pounds (about £1 million in today’s money). Stone, “Beaufort v. Beaufort,” 135. Somerset remarried Colonel Charles Fitzroy, the illegitimate son of the 2nd Duke of Grafton, in July 1748 and died seven months later, six days after giving birth to another daughter; Derby Mercury, February 16, 1749.

9. See McEntee, “Barrington Park, Gloucestershire,” n. 13.

10. Allan Ramsay, Mary de Cardonnel, 1742, oil on canvas, 49 1/2 x 39 1/2 in. (125.7 x 100.3 cm), Newton House, Dinefwr, Carmathenshire, National Trust, NT 869215, https://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/869215.

11. Hone usually signed his miniatures, but not always. For example, he did not sign his important self-portrait, painted in 1749 when he was thirty-one; offered in The Pohl-Ströher Collection of Portrait Miniatures, Part III, Sotheby’s, London, December 5, 2019, lot 254, https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2019/the-pohl-stroeher-collection-of-portrait-miniatures-part-iii/nathaniel-hone-r-a-self-portrait-aged-31. This miniature bears an inscription on the verso: “Seipse Nath.l Hone Pinxit. / AET. 31: / 1749.”

12. Some decades on, the maturing beauty of Barrington Park would be celebrated in an engraving commissioned by Lady Talbot in 1778 from the artist Thomas Bonner, whom she paid thirty-five pounds, as documented in McEntee, “Barrington Park, Gloucestershire.”

13. There is a marble tomb monument to her by Joseph Nollekens (1737–1823) at St. Mary’s Church, Great Barrington. See https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3939254.

14. Algernon Graves and William Vine Cronin, A History of the Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, P. R. A. (London: Henry Graves and Company, 1899), 2:821.

Francis Chalmers (1869–1945), Edinburgh, by 1945 [1];

Purchased from his sale, Miniatures, the properties of Alfred Pearson . . . Francis Chalmers . . . Miss Nora Dawson . . . and objects of art and vertu, the property of a lady, and from various sources, Christie’s, London, January 29, 1946, lot 16, as Portrait of Mary, Wife of William, Second Lord Talbot, by Bartle Charles Philip (1886–1949) and Elsie Gertrude (1888–1967) Kehoe, Saltdean, Sussex, 1946–1950 [2];

Purchased from Elsie Kehoe’s sale, Objects of Vertu, Fine Watches, Etc., Including The Property of Mrs. W. D. Dickson; also Fine Portrait Miniatures Comprising The Property of Mrs. Kehoe, Sotheby’s, London, June 15, 1950, lot 135, as Countess Talbot, by Leggatt Brothers, London, probably on behalf of Mr. John W. (1905–2000) and Mrs. Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, 1950–1958 [3];

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

Notes

[1] Francis Chalmers lived at 20 Corrennie Gardens and was a senior partner of the firm of Skene, Edwards, and Garson. According to Edinburgh Evening News (September 29, 1945): 3.

[1] Described in the auction catalogue as, “Portrait of Admiral Watson, in naval uniform—by Gustavus Hamilton; and portrait of Mary, wife of William, second Lord Talbot, full face in blue décolleté dress with yellow cloak by Nathanial Hone— oval enamels—(two).” According to Art Prices Current, “Kelvie” bought lot 16 for 21 pounds. This is likely a misspelling of “Kehoe” because four years later Mrs. Kehoe sold the same portrait in her sale.

[3] Described in the auction catalogue as, “An enamel miniature of Countess Talbot, by Nathaniel Hone, signed and dated 1743 at back, nearly full face, wearing pearls in her hair, pearl ear-rings and others adorning her low-cut blue dress over which is a yellow scarf, oval, 2 in. From the Francis Chalmers Collection. Exhibited at the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Water Colours Exhibition, 1943. Countess Talbot, née Mary de Cardormel [sic], was the wife of William, second Lord Talbot, b. 1718.”

Leggatt bought lot 135 for 24 pounds. Archival research has shown that Leggatt Brothers served as purchasing agents for the Starrs. See correspondence between Betty Hogg and Martha Jane Starr, May 15 and June 3, 1950, Nelson-Atkins curatorial files.

Allan Ramsay, Mary de Cardonnel, 1742, oil on canvas, 49 1/2 x 39 1/2 in. (125.7 x 100.3 cm), Newton House, Dinefwr, Carmathenshire, National Trust, NT 869215.

Attributed to John Vanderbank, Called Lucy Trevor, Mrs (Edward) Rice (1706–1786), but possibly really Mary de Cardonnel, Countess Talbot (ca. 1719–1787), ca. 1733–37, oil on canvas, 50 x 40 in. (127 x 101.6 cm), Newton House, Dinefwr, Carmathenshire, National Trust, NT 869198.

Exhibition of Paintings by the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1943.

The Starr Foundation Collection of Miniatures, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, December 8, 1972–January 14, 1973, no cat., no. 41, as Countess Talbot, nee De Cardonnel.

Catalogue of Miniatures, the properties of Alfred Pearson . . . Francis Chalmers . . . Miss Nora Dawson . . . and objects of art and vertu, the property of a lady, and from various sources (London: Christie’s, January 29, 1946), lot 16, as Portrait of Mary, Wife of William, Second Lord Talbot.

Objects of Vertu, Fine Watches, Etc., Including The Property of Mrs. W. D. Dickson; also Fine Portrait Miniatures Comprising The Property of Mrs. Kehoe, (London: Sotheby’s, June 15, 1950), lot 135, as Countess Talbot.

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 41, p. 19, (repro.), as Countess Talbot, nee De Cardonnel.