The Art of Mary Linwood: Embroidery, Installation, and Entrepreneurship in Britain, 1787-1845 9781350428126, 1350428124

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The Art of Mary Linwood

Material Culture of Art and Design Material Culture of Art and Design is devoted to scholarship that brings art history into dialogue with interdisciplinary material culture studies. The material components of an object—its medium and physicality—are key to understanding its cultural significance. Material culture has stretched the boundaries of art history and emphasized new points of contact with other disciplines, including anthropology, archaeology, consumer, and mass culture studies, the literary movement called “Thing Theory,” and materialist philosophy. Material Culture of Art and Design seeks to publish studies that explore the relationship between art and material culture in all of its complexity. The series is a venue for scholars to explore specific object histories (or object biographies, as the term has developed), studies of medium, and the procedures for making works of art, and investigations of art’s relationship to the broader material world that comprises society. It seeks to be the premiere venue for publishing scholarship about works of art as exemplifications of material culture. The series encompasses material culture in its broadest dimensions, including the decorative arts (furniture, ceramics, metalwork, textiles), everyday objects of all kinds (toys, machines, musical instruments), and studies of the familiar high arts of painting and sculpture. The series welcomes proposals for monographs, thematic studies, and edited collections. Series Editor: Michael Yonan, University of California, Davis, USA Advisory Board: Wendy Bellion, University of Delaware, USA Claire Jones, University of Birmingham, UK Stephen McDowall, University of Edinburgh, UK Amanda Phillips, University of Virginia, USA John Potvin, Concordia University, Canada Olaya Sanfuentes, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Chile Stacey Sloboda, University of Massachusetts Boston, USA Kristel Smentek, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA Robert Wellington, Australian National University, Australia

Volumes in the Series British Women and Cultural Practices of Empire, 1775–1930, Edited by Rosie Dias and Kate Smith Jewellery in the Age of Modernism, 1918–1940: Adornment and Beyond, Simon Bliss Childhood by Design: Toys and the Material Culture of Childhood, 1700–Present, Edited by Megan Brandow-Faller Material Literacy in Eighteenth-Century Britain: A Nation of Makers, Edited by Serena Dyer and Chloe Wigston Smith Sculpture and the Decorative in Britain and Europe, Seventeenth Century to Contemporary, Edited by Imogen Hart and Claire Jones Georges Rouault and Material Imagining, Jennifer Johnson The Versailles Effect: Objects, Lives and Afterlives of the Domain, Edited by Mark Ledbury and Robert Wellington Domestic Space in Britain, 1750–1840: Materiality, Sociability and Emotion, Freya Gowrley Domestic Space in France and Belgium: Art, Literature and Design, 1850–1920, Edited by Claire Moran Enlightened Animals in Eighteenth-Century Art: Sensation, Matter, and Knowledge, Sarah R. Cohen Materials, Practices, and Politics of Shine in Modern Art and Popular Culture, Edited by Antje Krause-Wahl, Petra Löffler, and Änne Söll Lead in Modern and Contemporary Art, Edited by Sharon Hecker and Silvia Bottinelli Transformative Jars, Edited by Anna Grasskamp and Anne Gerritsen Material Cultures of the Global Eighteenth Century, Edited by Wendy Bellion and Kristel Smentek Intimate Interiors: Sex, Politics, and Material Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Bedroom and Boudoir, Edited by Tara Zanardi and Christopher M. S. Johns The Material Landscapes of Scotland’s Jewellery Craft, 1780–1914, Sarah Laurenson Ceramics in the Victorian Era: Meanings and Metaphors in Painting and Literature, Rachel Gotlieb

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Praise for The Art of Mary Linwood “Highly readable and beautifully researched, The Art of Mary Linwood restores this multifaceted artist to her rightful place in the history of art, offering a fascinating insight into the remarkable experience of a virtuosic embroiderer, entrepreneur, installation artist, mentor, and educator.” Laura Engel, Professor of English, Duquesne University, USA “Deftly explores Linwood’s multiple roles as entrepreneur, educator, exhibition designer, and embroidery artist, enriching scholarship on women artists, and challenging common assumptions about art history, material culture, and gender.” Christina K. Lindeman, Associate Professor of Art History, University of South Alabama, USA “This overdue biography situates Mary Linwood’s unique artistic practice in the context of cultural patriotism, the London gallery scene, and debates about replication with fresh relevance today.” Kimberly Chrisman Campbell, author of Fashion Victims (2015), Worn on This Day (2019) and Skirts (2022). “This fascinating book repositions Mary Linwood at the center of London’s vibrant gallery culture, delivering a comprehensive picture of Linwood’s innovative work across exhibition making and the decorative arts.” Chloe Wigston Smith, Senior Lecturer, English and Related Literature, University of York, UK “Placing Linwood in the contexts of institution, profession, and national identity to name but a few, this illuminating, precise, and deeply researched text finally gives a marginal figure of eighteenth-century art history the attention that she, and her fascinating work, deserves.” Freya Gowrley, Lecturer in History of Art and Liberal Arts, University of Bristol, UK “This book makes an essential contribution to British art history, textile history, and the history of display. Its treatment of Linwood, who combined the roles of female artist, entrepreneur, curator, and educator, reveals new, vibrant paths of study.” Ryan Whyte, Associate Professor, Faculty of Arts and Science, OCAD University, Canada

The Art of Mary Linwood Embroidery, Installation, and Entrepreneurship in Britain, 1787–1845 Heidi A. Strobel

BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2024 Copyright © Heidi A. Strobel, 2024 Heidi A. Strobel has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on pp. xiv–xv constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design by Irene Martinez Costa Cover image: John Hoppner RA, Portrait of Miss Mary Linwood (1755–1845), Artist in Needlework, c. 1800. Oil painting. 91.4 cm x 71.1 cm. Bequeathed by Miss Ellen Markland. Courtesy V&A, London. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Strobel, Heidi A., 1968- author. Title: The art of Mary Linwood : embroidery, installation, and entrepreneurship in Britain, 1787-1845 / Heidi A. Strobel. Description: London : Bloomsbury Visual Arts, [2024] | Series: Material culture of art and design | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2023024110 (print) | LCCN 2023024111 (ebook) | ISBN 9781350428089 (hardback) | ISBN 9781350428126 (paperback) | ISBN 9781350428096 (pdf) | ISBN 9781350428102 (epub) | ISBN 9781350428119 Subjects: LCSH: Linwood, Mary, 1755-1845. | Needleworkers–Great Britain–Biography. | Businesswomen–Great Britain–Biography. | Women artists–Great Britain–Biography. | Embroidery–Great Britain–History. | Pictures–Copying–History. | Artist-run galleries– Great Britain–History. | Nationalism and art–Great Britain–History. | Art and society–Great Britain–History. Classification: LCC NK9198.L56 S77 2024 (print) | LCC NK9198.L56 (ebook) | DDC 746.44092 [B]–dc23/eng/20230915 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023024110 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023024111 ISBN:

HB: 978-1-3504-2808-9 ePDF: 978-1-3504-2809-6 eBook: 978-1-3504-2810-2

Series: Material Culture of Art and Design Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

For Paul, Wyatt, and Genevieve Bone

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Contents List of Plates List of Figures Acknowledgments Introduction 1 2 3 4 5 6

Embroidery, Education, and Commerce: Linwood’s Early Years The Pantheon and Hanover Square Exhibitions Portraiture, Publications, and Promotion The Leicester Square Gallery: Performing British Patriotism Of Students and Studying: The Academic Tradition and the Scripture Room Linwood’s Legacies

x xi xiv 1 15 29 53 69 95 115

Catalogue of Linwood’s Textiles

131

Notes Selected Bibliography Index

164 211 229

List of Plates 1

2 3 4

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

The long gallery from The Linwood Gallery of Pictures in Needlework: With a biographical sketch of the painters (1811), Mary Linwood, Photo: Yale Center for British Art Self Portrait, c. 1786, Mary Linwood, Collection of Tim & Robin Farina, Photo: Tim & Robin Farina Self Portrait (detail), c. 1786, Mary Linwood, Collection of Tim & Robin Farina, Photo: Tim & Robin Farina The Dens from The Linwood Gallery of Pictures in Needlework: With a biographical sketch of the painters (1811), Mary Linwood, Yale Center for British Art Inside of a Gentleman’s Study, 1793, Henry Singleton, Private Collection King Lear, c. 1785, Mary Linwood, replica after Sir Joshua Reynolds, Bowes Museum King Lear (detail), c. 1785, Mary Linwood, replica after Sir Joshua Reynolds, © Bowes Museum Mary Linwood, c. 1785, John Russell, Private Collection The Royal Academicians in General Assembly, 1795, Henry Singleton, © Royal Academy of Arts Woodman, 1800, Mary Linwood, replica after Thomas Gainsborough, Leicester Museums and Galleries Napoleon, c. 1802, Mary Linwood, replica after Thomas Phillips (1st copy), Victoria and Albert Museum Salvator Mundi, 1789, Mary Linwood, replica after Carlo Dolci, © Royal Collection Trust/His Majesty King Charles III Salvator Mundi (detail), 1789, Mary Linwood, replica after Carlo Dolci, © Royal Collection Trust/His Majesty King Charles III Country Child (Girl with a Cat), 1809, Mary Linwood, replica after Thomas Gainsborough, Leicester Museums and Galleries David with His Sling, 1789, Mary Linwood, replica after Carlo Dolci, Leicester Museums and Galleries Tygress, c. 1792–3, Mary Linwood, replica after George Stubbs, Yale Center for British Art

List of Figures I.1 I.2 1.1 1.2 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7

Diagram of Leicester Square Gallery, 2020, © Kaitlyn Woodworth-Mills 2 The Long Gallery, Miss Linwood’s Exhibition of Needlework, c. 1830, 6 unknown artist, published in Robert Chambers’ The Book of Days (1862) Priory, 1826, Mary Linwood, Leicester Museums and Galleries 17 Self Portrait (detail), c. 1786, Mary Linwood, Collection of Tim & Robin Farina, Photo: Tim & Robin Farina 25 Pantheon Exhibition Booklet, 1787, Collection of Author 30 Pantheon, c. 1769, unknown artist, a cross section of the rotunda of the Pantheon in Oxford Street, London as designed by James Wyatt 31 Skeffington Hall, F. Cary after Mary Linwood, © Royal Collection Trust/ His Majesty King Charles III 37 Inside of a Gentleman’s Study (detail), 1793, Henry Singleton, Private Collection38 Inside of a Gentleman’s Study (detail), 1793, Henry Singleton, Private Collection39 Admission ticket or autograph of Mary Linwood, c. 1798, © Royal Academy of Arts 43 Lodona, 1792, Bartolozzi after Maria Cosway, © The Trustees of the British Museum. 45 Mary Linwood, c. 1800, Maria Cosway, private collection 46 The Academicians of the Royal Academy, 1771–2, Johann Zoffany, © Royal Collection Trust/His Majesty King Charles III 50 Mary Linwood, c. 1800, Richard Westall, Leicester Museums and Galleries 55 Mary Linwood, 1801, William Hobday, Leicester Museums and Galleries 57 Mary Linwood, 1806, Pietro Tomkins, Leicester Museums and Galleries 57 Mary Linwood, 1806, William Beechey/engraving by Ridley, National Galleries of Scotland 58 Mary Linwood, c. 1800, watercolor by unknown artist, Leicester Museums and Galleries 60 Mary Linwood, c. 1800, Ann Jessop Beechey (?), Yale Center for British Art 61 Mary Linwood, c. 1800, Rivers/engraving by Ridley, Leicester Museums and Galleries 62

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List of Figures

3.8 Mary Linwood, c. 1804, William Grimaldi, Leicester Museums and Galleries66 4.1 Distant View of Leicester Square, c. 1750, unknown artist, Westminster Archives71 4.2 View of Linwood’s Leicester Square Gallery, c. 1840, unknown artist, London Museum 72 4.3 A Boy with a Cat—Morning, 1787, Thomas Gainsborough, Metropolitan Museum of Art 79 4.4 Children at the Fire, 1809, published by Linwood after Gainsborough, British Museum 81 4.5 Woodman in a Storm, 1790, Peter Simon after Gainsborough, British Museum83 4.6 Shepherd’s Boy in a Storm, 1781, Richard Earlom/Henry Birche after Gainsborough, Yale Center for British Art 88 4.7 Shepherd’s Boy in a Storm, 1800, Mary Linwood, replica after Gainsborough88 4.8 Cottage Children with an Ass, 1791, Richard Earlom/Henry Birche after Gainsborough, Linwood Scrapbook, Leicester Museums and Galleries 90 5.1 King Lear (detail), c. 1785, Mary Linwood, replica after Sir Joshua Reynolds, Bowes Museum 98 5.2 Sir Joshua Reynolds, c. 1800, Mary Linwood, replica after Sir Joshua Reynolds, Bowes Museum 99 5.3 Laughing Girl, 1798, Mary Linwood, replica after Sir Joshua Reynolds, Private Collection 100 5.4 Laughing Girl (detail), 1798, Mary Linwood, replica after Sir Joshua Reynolds, Private Collection 102 5.5 Salvator Mundi, 1650, Carlo Dolci, The Burghley House Collection 105 5.6 Salvator Mundi (detail), 1789, Mary Linwood, replica after Carlo Dolci © Royal Collection Trust/His Majesty King Charles III 106 5.7 Salvator Mundi (detail), 1789, Mary Linwood, replica after Carlo Dolci © Royal Collection Trust/His Majesty King Charles III 106 5.8 Salvator Mundi (detail), 1789, Mary Linwood, replica after Carlo Dolci © Royal Collection Trust/His Majesty King Charles III 107 5.9 Salvator Mundi (detail), 1789, Mary Linwood, replica after Carlo Dolci © Royal Collection Trust/His Majesty King Charles III 108 5.10 Madonna della Sedia, c. 1800, print by unknown engraver, Linwood Scrapbook, Leicester Museums and Galleries 110 5.11 Deposition, 1809, Mary Linwood, replica after Ludovico Carracci, Leicester Museums and Galleries 111

List of Figures

xiii

5.12 Nativity, 1810, Mary Linwood, replica after Carlo Maratti, Leicester Museums and Galleries 111 6.1 Priory Façade, 1845, Fanny Bond Palmer (?), Leicester Museums and Galleries116 6.2 Mary Linwood, 1826, Mary Linwood, Linwood Scrapbook, Leicester Museums and Galleries 117 6.3 Mitre & Keys Inn, c. 1830, John Flower, British Museum 119 6.4 Mitre & Keys Inn, c. 1830, Mary Linwood, replica after John Flower, Linwood Scrapbook, Leicester Museums and Galleries 120 6.5 Mary Linwood Burial Marker, St. Margaret’s, Leicester, 1845, Collection of Author 123 C.1 Horse and Dog, 1806, Mary Linwood, replica after John Boultbee, Leicester Museums and Galleries 132 C.2 Pomeranian Dog, 1798, Mary Linwood, replica after Charles Catton the Elder, Leicester Museums and Galleries 133 C.3 Hare, 1787, Mary Linwood, replica after Moses Haughton, Leicester Museums and Galleries 139 C.4 Kingfisher, Snipe, Curlew, and Woodcock, 1798, Mary Linwood, replica after Moses Haughton, Leicester Museums and Galleries 140 C.5 Grapes, c. 1775, Mary or Hannah Linwood, replica after Mr. Jackson, Leicester Museums and Galleries 142 C.6 Werther’s Tomb, c. 1775, Mary Linwood?, Leicester Museums and Galleries 143 C.7 Landscape, 1809, Mary Linwood, replica after Francisco Mola, Victoria and Albert Museum 145 C.8 Napoleon, c. 1802, Mary Linwood, replica after Thomas Phillips (2nd copy), Leicester Museums and Galleries 151 C.9 Old Woman Reading/The Prophetess Hannah, Mary Linwood?, replica 153 after circle of Rembrandt, c. 1800 C.10 Girl Weeping over a Starved Woodfinch, 1798, Mary Linwood, replica after John Russell, Leicester Museums and Galleries 156 C.11 Cottage Girl/Frugal Fare, 1798, Mary Linwood, replica after John Russell, Leicester Museums and Galleries 157 C.12 Lion Emerging from a Cave, 1798, Mary Linwood?, replica after George Stubbs and George Parbury, Leicester Museums and Galleries 160 C.13 Sierra Leone Coin, 1791, George Parbury, Assay Office, 178 161

Acknowledgments In my introduction to this volume, I discuss Kristen Frederickson’s observations on writing about female artists and Vasarian historiography. According to Frederickson, the most realistic model for writing about this population tends to be one in which gaps and contradictions play a role rather than a smooth and linear Vasarian narrative. The same is true for the writing of this book, which occurred during a lengthy period that included the Covid-19 pandemic, family loss, and professional relocation. Nonetheless, this volume taught me invaluable lessons about the importance of good friendship, patience, and perseverance. I began this book while teaching at the University of Evansville, where I would like to thank Dean Ray Lutgring and the Department of Archaeology and Art History (especially Jennie Ebeling) for their cherished and irreplaceable friendship and support. A special thank you is owed to Meg Atwater-Singer for her years of friendship and research help. I finished this book while pursuing a new career at the University of North Texas, where I am thankful for the support and encouragement of Dean Karen Hutzel, Senior Associate Dean of Administrative Affairs Eric Ligon, Senior Administrative Coordinator Jerry Aul, and my other colleagues in the Dean’s and Chairs’ offices (especially Jennifer Aglio and Belinda Reyes), the Art History Department, and the College of Visual Art and Design. On a related note, I am very grateful for the years of friendship and scholarly support that I have found at the American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) and Historians of Eighteenth Century Art and Architecture (HECAA) annual conferences. This volume could not have been written with the help and counsel of many people and organizations. I would like to thank my Bloomsbury editor Ross Fraser-Smith and Material Culture of Art and Design series editor Michael Yonan. I’m also quite grateful to my good friend and collaborator Jennifer Germann and writing partner Carolyn Day for encouraging me to complete this project. I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers of my book proposal and manuscript for helping to enrich the volume with their perceptive comments. I am indebted to Case Farney, Amber Ludwig Otero, and Mandy Hughes for their superlative editing assistance; research assistants Hilary Wolkan, Caitlyn Haake-Mix, and Elizabeth Long were also a key part of the research and writing process. Any remaining mistakes are my own. I am grateful to the University of North Texas and the University of Evansville for their funding support. I am appreciative of the support provided by the following institutions/organizations: Yale University/Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, the Pasold Textile Research Fund, the American Philosophical Society, and the Council of Independent Colleges Kress Fund. Many thanks are due to the individuals at the following institutions: Andrew Potter (Royal Academy), Simona Dolari (Christie’s of London), Barbara McCormack (Russell Library, Maynooth University), Evelyn

Acknowledgments

xv

Flanagan (the Library of the University College Dublin), and the late Linda Eaton and Rebecca Duffy (Winterthur Museum). I am very thankful for a 2018 fellowship at the Yale Center for British Art, where I am indebted to the help of support of Amy Meyers, Elisabeth Fairman, Beth Morris, and Laura Callery. I could not have completed this project without the assistance of the Leicester Museum and Art Gallery, in particular, Claire Cooper, Fiona Graham, and Jane May. Other notable sources of support are Tim and Robin Farina, Leonard and Penny Warner, David Alexander, Peter Humfrey, Linda Dawes, Julie Bellamy, and Jordan Hall. Finally, my deepest gratitude to Paul, Wyatt, and Genevieve Bone, as well as Marilyn  Strobel and Don Horner, who provide me with love and laughter on a regular basis.

xvi

Introduction

In 1809, twenty-two years after holding her first exhibition, entrepreneur and embroiderer Mary Linwood opened her permanent gallery in Leicester Square, a neighborhood known then and now for its popular entertainment. The first gallery to be run by a woman in London, it featured her needlework copies of popular paintings after Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–92), Thomas Gainsborough (1727–88), and George Stubbs (1724–1806), placed in rooms replete with props and architectural perspectives and carefully curated points of view that transformed spectators into active participants as they moved through a rich array of English art, Gothic settings, and other sentimental journeys.1 Linwood’s series of galleries, decorated with nowlost materials, educated visitors and fashioned a unique feminine identity for its entrepreneur, facilitating her participation in the London art world until her death on March 2, 1845.2 With her  passing, however, two integral concepts were lost to history: the relationship between humans and objects in her gallery spaces, as well as an understanding of her cultural agency, which, like her entrepreneurial endeavors, appears to have been evanescent. The renovation and opening of the Leicester Square Gallery spanned the years 1805 to 1809 and coincided with a key period in the formation of British identity as identified by historian Linda Colley. Patriotism, which Colley defines as “a highly rational response and a creative one …. benefiting different groups and interests,” was an important part of this process, as many Britons in the late eighteenth century sought to define themselves in opposition to their foreign enemies, particularly the French.3 Linwood’s cultural patriotism was expressed as a celebration of British art and culture, a strategy that ensured the long-term popularity of her gallery. It also tempered the transgressive act of publicly exhibiting her art, which went against the ideals of modesty, restraint, and domesticity expected of women during the Georgian period.4 Linwood’s cultural patriotism was displayed throughout her Leicester Square gallery. Its large first room emphasized replicas after Linwood’s countrymen, putting them at the pinnacle of aesthetic development in Great Britain (Color Plate 1). Each of the following smaller chambers focused on facets of British identity such as imperial expansion (the Dens), industrialization and the disappearance of the rural countryside (the Cottage, Grove, and Ruins), and good stewardship (the Gothic Room) (Figure I.1). Cultural patriotism was also expressed in other aspects of Linwood’s life, such as her acquisition of books, prints, and paintings, and her travel, all of which had a pronounced Anglocentric focus.5 Furthermore, in the portraits and biographical profiles that she

Figure I.1  Diagram of Leicester Square Gallery, 2020, © Kaitlyn Woodworth-Mills.

Introduction

3

commissioned, she constructed a feminine identity that utilized the traditional ideals of patriotism and philanthropy, both on the national and local levels, particularly for hospitals and military groups in her native Leicestershire. These patriotic efforts, coupled with her pioneering professional role and financial success, call for a more visible place in the history of British art and visual culture in the twenty-first century. Although Linwood was born into a craftsman’s family, the long-lived Leicester Square gallery elevated her social status and brought her artistic renown as well as financial security. When she died, her estate was worth £45,000, or roughly £5,199,822 ($5,460,000) in today’s currency.6 Her ticket sales were a significant part of her income since she did not sell her textiles. No register of Linwood’s visitors survives, but a very conservative estimate based on her net worth in 1845 suggests that the gallery likely saw approximately 115,000 visitors during its thirty-six years of operation.7 This was an average of 3200 visitors per year, equivalent to the average number of visitors welcomed by small museums today.8 While this figure was dwarfed by Royal Academy attendance, no other gallery proprietor enjoyed the longevity that Linwood did.9 Linwood’s gallery was on par with other types of cultural exhibitions available in London at the time. In Catherine Roach’s recent analysis of this early nineteenthcentury exhibition culture, she describes it as an ecosystem, with exhibition organizers, practitioners, and viewers as its participants, “at once mutually supporting and fiercely competitive ….exhibitions and their objects were not consumed in isolation; rather, both the crowded walls of these displays and the busy itineraries of their viewers encouraged competitive viewing.”10 In this environment, Linwood’s creation and display of her textiles encouraged visitors to compare her exhibitions to types of entertainment in the British capital. Linwood’s pictorial embroidery or needle painting, as it was called during her lifetime, emulated the practice and display of oil painting in several ways. It featured irregular stitches, similar to painterly brushstrokes, unlike the more uniform tent and cross stitches popular in the mid-nineteenth century. In her gallery, her copies were framed and often replicated the size of their prototypes. Furthermore, Linwood’s galleries featured elements seen at the Royal Academy, such as red silk walls, decorative drapery, and strategic seating arrangements. Yet her installations, populated with material objects and intentional viewpoints, also resembled the more unconventional immersive exhibitions designed by Gainsborough and Philip James de Loutherbourg (1740–1812). While Linwood’s work engaged with discourses of entertainment, education, and aesthetics, she has not been part of the stories of late Georgian or early Romantic art, or more broadly, the art historical canon. Simply put, art history does not know what to do with her. Her textiles do not readily fit into mainstream art historical binaries like copy and original, painting and embroidery, fine and decorative arts, or amateur and professional. Linwood’s adroit, innovative, and often ephemeral displays of her replicas challenged conventional art history by testing its boundaries. The fact that Linwood also worked outside of the canon gave her the freedom to push against these sometimes-arbitrary distinctions. Her intermedial practice was itself an intervention that complicated established traditional art historical categories and is one that its historians should heed.11 She questioned the primacy of painting while simultaneously adapting it to her own use to popularize a venue that offered

4

The Art of Mary Linwood

her visitors an entertaining escape from the urban bustle of London. Her long life, creativity, and shrewd business skills ensured that her works were seen and enjoyed across generations of visitors, shaping their understanding of past, present, and future English art. Linwood’s background as a teacher is key to understanding the pedagogical goals for the Leicester Square gallery. For most of her life, her work in London was balanced with family obligations in her hometown of Leicester, which included working at the family’s boarding school and, eventually, the care of her mother. When the London gallery opened in 1809, Linwood produced a small guide that contained biographical information about the artists whose work she re-created. Between 1809 and 1845, she also published catalogues every two to three years that were included in the cost of admission to the gallery. Following the tradition of the Royal Academy, Linwood included poetry in almost every catalogue entry, favoring excerpts from well-loved British poets such as William Cowper (1731–1800), James Thomson (1700–48), and John Milton (1608–74). The guide and catalogues educated Linwood’s visitors about the collection, amplified their individual aesthetic and emotional responses to it, and were another example of her cultural patriotism. While Linwood’s tenure, financial success, and balancing act between work and home in two cities were extraordinary, her professional activity was not. Her career and those of her sister artists remain poorly documented, in part because they worked outside national academies and court circles, where recordkeeping was encouraged and financially rewarded. Art historians Linda Nochlin, Mary D. Garrard, Norma Broude, Griselda Pollock, Mary Sheriff, and Angela Rosenthal have confronted the modernist and institutional biases that have written women like Linwood and her fellow female artists and entrepreneurs out of art history.12 More recently, Paris SpiesGans has questioned the preconceptions of Nochlin’s transformational essay such as the gendering of greatness and the art historical canon, the amateur/professional dichotomy and access to the male nude.13 Nevertheless, in contemporary art history, academic affiliation and the sale of one’s art remain the main criteria for professional status for women artists during the Georgian period, a designation that places Angelica Kauffman and Mary Moser at the helm of the period’s art history. Chapter  2 offers a more comprehensive and chronologically accurate definition of artistic professionalism centered on the idea of long-standing recognition by a contemporary audience. This more nuanced definition of “professional” artist yields a fuller picture of working artists in the late eighteenth century. Despite the publication of Linda Nochlin’s groundbreaking essay fifty years ago, art history’s methodological focus has remained fixed on institutional affiliation as the main avenue to professional success.14 Thus, the picture of artists like Linwood and many of her colleagues (male and female) who were active outside of mainstream cultural institutions remains incomplete. Although Linwood was an early London gallery owner, her story has remained untold, in part because of her lack of academic bona fides. This art historical erasure was further compounded by changing venues, temporal gaps, and multiple jobs that frustrate the linear narrative favored by early art historians like Giorgio Vasari and national art academies. Linwood’s relationship

Introduction

5

to John Constable, for example, is a perfect illustration of her historical expurgation. Until now, little has been written about Linwood’s late 1801 commission from him, which spoke to their shared appreciation of the British landscape.

Cultural Patriotism, Nostalgia & Sightseeing Scenes of British landscape dominated Linwood’s exhibition venues. Her rural subject matter acted as a balm against fears of a Napoleonic invasion, which were at a high point in the closing years of the eighteenth century and the first decade of the nineteenth century. Linwood offered her visitors journeys to a distant past by evoking nostalgia with innovative exhibition techniques to enact a type of virtual and domestic tourism safely confined within the borders of her venues.15 For Linwood’s overt partiality for bucolic subject matter is clearly on display in John Hoppner’s portrait of her from around 1800 (Cover Image). This aesthetic preference was also part of her copying and collecting practices, discussed for the first time in these pages. Her artistic and social strategy of cultural patriotism was reflected in the many copies of British paintings in her gallery. Linwood’s own art collection in Leicester contained well over one hundred depictions of landscapes by her fellow countrymen and some by her own hand, while her personal library contained many travel guides to British terrain and volumes on the picturesque. For Linwood, who spent most of her life in cities, landscape symbolized national identity, leisure, travel, and an escape from responsibilities—serving both as a nostalgic ideal and a memento of past travels. In the Leicester Square gallery, Linwood’s artistry, enhanced through innovative exhibition techniques, enticed visitors to journey to a distant past. As they stepped into the Gothic Room and walked down its long passage, some of them reflected on the doomed fates of royal and sometimes popular prisoners Lady Jane Grey, Napoleon, and the twelfth-century Arthur, Duke of Brittany. English antiquarian John Fiott Lee (1783–1866), for example, described Linwood’s 9 x 7-foot replica of Lady Jane Grey (after a painting by Northcote) as “the picture all the town runs to see and produces her 2/3 of the receipts.”16 As Lee and Linwood’s other guests walked by the cave-like apertures of the Dens, they viewed becalmed lions and tigers inspired by exotic Africa. In the Cottage and Ruins, Linwood capitalized on a yearning for the countryside and its creatures by replicating picturesque paintings by Gainsborough, exhibiting them with material objects or props that amplified their individual emotional and physical experiences. This affective response contrasted with the aesthetic and intellectual distance of the Neoclassical period; it was an integral part of the Romantic movement and her visitors’ subjective reaction to her depictions of historical figures, wild beasts, and landscape scenes. The veracity of their experience was enhanced by a naturalistic style that emulated her painted prototypes. Although Linwood’s Leicester Square gallery was viewed as a must-see tourist spot in London, only a few illustrations of it exist. Two of them appear in The Linwood Gallery of Pictures in Needle-Work and a Biographical Sketch of the Painters which she published in 1811 (Color Plates 1, 4). These images were engraved by C[harles] [Parsons] Knight (1743–1826) after drawings by an unknown artist, perhaps Linwood

6

The Art of Mary Linwood

Figure I.2  The Long Gallery, Miss Linwood’s Exhibition of Needlework, c. 1830, unknown artist, published in Robert Chambers’ The Book of Days (1862).

herself. The walls of the main gallery featured her framed replicas of popular paintings arranged according to symmetry and size, like a display in a private collection. In contrast, the smaller rooms (the Gothic Room, Cottage, Grove, Dens, and Ruins) often featured replicas after the same artist. For example, in the Dens, two of Linwood’s replicas after Stubbs are seen alongside a copy of a seascape by Vernet (Color Plate 4). Robert Chambers published a third image of the Leicester Square gallery in The Book of Days (1862), a compilation dedicated to marking the death dates of famous British figures, including Linwood (Figure I.2).17 Chambers wrote that Linwood had transformed the entire gallery to ensure a novel visit and described her pictures as “cleverly set for picturesque effect.”18 Picturesque here is more than just an aesthetic category, for it also refers to the physical experience of walking through the smaller rooms that were attached to the main gallery. According to Chambers, ….at the end [of the principal room] was a throne and canopy of satin and silver. A long dark passage led to a prison cell, in which was Northcote’s Lady Jane Grey Visited by the Abbot and Keeper of the Tower at Night; the scenic illusion

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being complete. Next was a cottage, with casement and hatch-door, and within it Gainsborough’s cottage children, standing by the fire, with chimney-piece and furniture complete. Near to this was a den, with lionesses; and further on, through a cavern aperture was a brilliant sea-view and picturesque shore.19

Figure 1.2 illustrates most of the features of the main gallery, including the canopy that marked the threshold to the first of the chambers, the Gothic Room, which housed Romanticizing portraits of royal prisoners. In the large Leicester Square gallery, Linwood transformed a two-dimensional painting into a three-dimensional experience using life-size embroidered replicas, altered spaces, and other material objects in her tailored chambers, referred to here as installations to emphasize their kinetic qualities.20 In the Gothic Room, for example, visitors gazed through a barred window at her replicas. Similarly in the Cottage, she placed a rustic door, fireplace, furniture, and a bowl of porridge. The special viewpoints and material objects enhanced her visitors’ individual journeys through her gallery by amplifying the picturesque and sublime features of her replicas in the ancillary rooms, while at the same time enhancing their veracity as high-quality copies. Linwood ultimately designed what art historian Jonathan Crary has described as a mixed reality in which “simulation was augmented by the adjacency of objects having a literal presence.”21 Madame Marie Tussaud (1761–1850), whose interactive London exhibitions also highlighted a liminal artistic practice, later adopted this popular strategy.22 Nearby visual phenomena, including theatre, peepshows, panoramas, and garden design, influenced Linwood’s display practices at her Leicester Square gallery. Her practice of placing objects in her installations appears particularly linked to the theatrical use of props, an abbreviation for stage property, defined by the OED as “any portable object (now usually other than an article of clothing) used in acting a play: a stage requisite, appurtenance, or accessory.”23 According to theater historian Andrew Sofer, props are “not mere accessories, but time machines … … a way of animat[ing] stage action.”24 Linwood used the material objects in her installations, which were inspired by their painted prototypes, to invigorate her display of embroidered copies and engage her audience in a way that the original paintings could not. The title of this volume, The Art of Mary Linwood: Embroidery, Installation, and Entrepreneurship in Britain, 1787–1845, speaks to the popular appeal of these special chambers and their props that highlighted the popularity of British landscape at the outset of the nineteenth century.

The Artistic Copy in the Eighteenth Century Linwood is known primarily as a copyist, a categorization that partially accounts for her marginal treatment in art historical scholarship. This is a selective and anachronistic approach that ignores the various views about copying and originality during her lifetime. The Royal Academy, founded in 1768, had a strict policy against copies, forbidding them in their founding charter.25 Embroidery was banned two years

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The Art of Mary Linwood

later, after three examples of it were seen at the 1770 exhibition.26 The Academy’s first president Sir Joshua Reynolds repeatedly reinforced their negative view of copying. In the second Discourse, for example, he declared that those who made copies as part of their education were “incapable of producing anything of their own, because their powers of invention and composition … lie torpid, and lose their energy for want of exercise.”27 For Reynolds, students should critically study past art but not slavishly copy it.28 According to this standard, Linwood had two strikes against her, for she both made copies as part of her own learning process and exhibited them as finished products. In the realm of decorative arts, a field often associated with Linwood, the act of copying was viewed less pejoratively. In her own family of artisanal laborers, the ability to make a good copy of an object was valued rather than denigrated. Similarly, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, connoisseurs were often attracted to good-quality replicas. For example, Richard Seymour-Conway (1800–70), the 4th Marquess of Hertford, commissioned and proudly displayed copies of a Louis XV desk and a desk belonging to the Elector of Bavaria. Similarly, German ébéniste David Roentgen (1743–1807) used his recipe for the imitation of chinoiserie lacquer (gum resin and shellac) to create furniture for Catherine the Great of Russia, Frederick the Great of Prussia, and Marie Antoinette of France, among others. These high-quality simulations (like the ones that Linwood produced) often reinforced the even more elevated reputation of the original object or material.29 This was particularly so when the original painting was destroyed, as was the case with Gainsborough’s Woodman (1787–8), Shepherd Boy (1781), and Cottage Children with an Ass (1785), all of which perished in a fire twenty years after the painter’s death. Linwood’s replicas, which she made while studying the paintings firsthand, created an important afterlife for the destroyed originals. In this cultural context, a high-quality copy still had artistic and cultural value. Instead of using originality as a benchmark of artistic success, Linwood’s copies should be viewed as they were in the early nineteenth century, or, in the words of Michael Baxandall, with a period eye.30

The Gendering of Copying and Embroidery The rise of amateur art and its commercialization during Linwood’s lifetime contributed to the gendering of the artistic copy as feminine, particularly in the field of fine arts.31 According to this biologically informed narrative, a woman is best suited to copy the work of other people, for she is doing what comes naturally to her: the act of reproduction. Conversely, a male artist has the intellectual ability to create an original work of art.32 This binary appears to break down in twentieth-century art history, where the clever creation of copies earned art historical praise and financial remuneration, as demonstrated by the mostly male heroes of modern art.33 The association between embroidery and craft, described by Clement Greenberg as “not art,” also accelerated the erasure of women like Linwood from art history.34 Historian Linda Cluckie, however, has cautioned against the use of such anachronistic categorization when assessing the status of needlework in the nineteenth century, stating that “it becomes hypothetical to argue whether embroidery is an art or craft, for how it is perceived by one generation

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may be very different to how it is perceived by the next.”35 Denigrating Linwood’s work because it shares some features with twenty-first-century craft ignores its important relationship to oil painting; this assumption was seen in several negative reviews of her embroidery in the 2014 British Folk Art exhibition.36 The artistic practice of embroidery has long been gendered as feminine (and more recently, a feminine craft), an argument at the core of Roszika Parker’s The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine. During the Victorian era, embroidery achieved a heightened stature, reflected in the establishment of the Royal School of Needlework and more generally, in a celebration of handicraft. As Parker argued, however, Victorian historians and histories of embroidery were largely responsible for the gendering of the medium, as they obscured the historical participation of men in the field.37 These accounts contributed to the reclassification of needlework as a feminine and amateur pastime.38 Although a groundbreaking text, Parker’s analysis is limited by a binary and stable definition of gender that characterizes second-wave feminist scholarship. It is difficult to describe Linwood’s career in terms of binary definitions of gender, for she utilized a feminine medium to participate in the mostly masculine London art world. The analysis I present here is instead indebted to Joan Wallach Scott’s fluid conception of gender as socially constructed, as well as Judith Butler’s definition of gender as a process or performance of repeated acts.39 Linwood’s embroidered replicas and gallery props (most of which were household items) became part of a public performance of domesticity, femininity, and patriotism that helped to mitigate her public art display and gallery ownership. The field of art history has been enriched by a material turn, a term coined by Maureen Daly Goggin to describe the study of material objects and practices. As part of this field, textiles—often thought of as both art and artifact, aesthetic and historical object—offer the possibility to expand traditional period and medial boundaries and to understand more about women’s artistic and textual communication.40 Importantly, Goggin, Beth Fowkes Tobin, and Susan Frye have identified needlework as a form of textual discourse with the potential to transform social, artistic, and economic values.41 According to Frye, “early modern people saw the products of women’s pens and needles as interconnected, a way of conceptualizing the combined media present in epitaphs, dedications, diaries, educational treatises, and commonplace books.”42 Essays in Material Literacy in Eighteenth-Century Britain, edited by Serena Dyer and Chloe Wigston Smith, demonstrate how material skills like needlework, dressmaking, and tailoring comprised a material literacy that often existed alongside textual literacy.43 Their advocacy of biographical narrative read through material objects provides an alternative to an art history based on written texts alone. Such approaches have enriched my consideration of the autobiographical elements of embroidered portraiture, in particular, Linwood’s c. 1786 needlework portrait after a pastel by John Russell (Color Plate 2). The textile debuted in a place of honor at her first exhibition of 1787, relaying some of the values that its prototype did not. In Chapter 2, I argue that the embroidered portrait served as an artist’s statement in her exhibition venues. It summarized Linwood’s goals for the public display of her art, which represented an intellectual conversion of fine art and its genres for her own purposes.

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The Art of Mary Linwood

The discursive functions of both needlework and portraiture are particularly meaningful when examining the work of female artists like Linwood, a group who are too often ignored by canonical art history and its record keepers.44 Marcia Pointon, importantly, has argued that portraits and self-portraits should be thought of as open-ended texts. They are the product of a social practice, an intersubjective exchange between the artist and the sitter, both of whom participated in the meaning of the image.45 In addition to the finished product, the artistic process of creating autobiographical images was itself important. It often signaled its maker’s ambitions and technical prowess, adding to the all too ephemeral information on women artists in museums, libraries, and archives. During her lifetime, Linwood chronicled her career in several ways: the embroidered self-portrait, newspaper advertising, biographical profiles, exhibition catalogues, and The Linwood Gallery of Pictures in Needle-Work and a Biographical Sketch of the Painters. She first used most of these approaches in preparation for her debut at the London Pantheon in 1787.

Venues, Historiography, and Format After Linwood’s Pantheon show, her textiles were seen in five different spaces in four cities for half a century. Between 1798 and 1801, her textiles were on display at the Hanover Square Concert Rooms in the English capital. She also held exhibitions in Edinburgh, Dublin, and Cork between 1804 and 1807 before opening her Leicester Square gallery in May 1809. The long-term lease on this large space allowed Linwood to more fully celebrate facets of early-nineteenth-century British identity that she had begun to explore in her earlier exhibitions. As I demonstrate in the following chapters, the structure of Linwood’s Leicester Square gallery and its lengthy rental also kept her free from the entanglements with print publishers and various artists encountered by shorter-lived commercial galleries like the Shakespeare Gallery and Macklin’s Poets Gallery, which, like Linwood’s spaces, celebrated the nation’s cultural heritage. The changing locations and varied tenures of Linwood’s galleries have made her a complicated person to write about, for no images and little information about these temporary venues survive.46 Her connections to multiple artists can make research on her arduous and time-consuming, as intense study on the individual artists whom she copied is required. At times, writing about Linwood has been akin to the reconstruction of her ephemeral installations like the Scripture Room, for at first glance, both endeavors appear to be transitory. Yet it is possible and indeed fruitful to learn from objects that no longer exist, as Zara Anishlanslin has argued.47 Furthermore, the many material objects that Linwood produced and/or purchased have aided my reconstruction of her life and lost artistic spaces.48 The contents of Linwood’s home, analyzed here for the first time, provide key information about her extraordinary wealth and artistic process.49 Her painting and print collection, for example, served as the basis for some of her replicas and contained mementos from her sketching trips to the homes of wealthy connoisseurs. Modern interest in Linwood began in the closing months of the Second World War. In March 1945, the centenary of her death was nostalgically marked by the first museum

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exhibition of her textiles. The Leicester Museum (later the New Walk Museum) displayed twenty-four textiles by or attributed to Linwood and four portraits of the artist.50 Six years later, the museum held another exhibition of Linwood’s work and objects associated with her.51 Short pamphlets were published in conjunction with both exhibitions, although neither of them attempted to describe her working process or analyzed her efforts within the broader scope of British art history.52 In 2014, ten of Linwood’s textiles were included in the Folk Art Show at Tate Britain and Compton Verney. While the 1945 and 1951 exhibitions highlighted Linwood’s skill as an embroiderer, they did not offer a critical examination of her technique, her practice of cultural patriotism, or the relationship between her textiles and exhibition catalogues. As an art historian who is also a gifted embroiderer, I use my embodied knowledge to help reconstruct the working process for someone whose work has disappeared from the archives. The outline of this book follows a roughly chronological and spatial scheme, but one that draws attention to important themes and issues that emerged at different points in Linwood’s life, such as cultural patriotism, social mobility, and self-fashioning. This volume is a hybrid, containing an artist-centered study coupled with a catalogue raisonné of Linwood’s textiles.53 In this book, embroidery is broadly defined as a textile surface decorated with pictures or patterns; needlework is used interchangeably with embroidery. In the volume’s first chapter, Linwood’s early years in Leicester are examined within the contexts of girls’ education and the material practice of embroidery. Teaching needlework at the family’s boarding school in Leicester brought Linwood into a higher and wealthier social orbit than the one into which she was born, for her students came from merchant, gentry, and aristocratic backgrounds. In the words of Pierre Bourdieu, the cultural knowledge acquired by Linwood and her students at the boarding school provided them with social mobility, the ability to navigate social classes higher than one’s own.54 For Linwood, such experiences facilitated her friendships with wealthy manufacturers and art collectors, such as Birmingham manufacturer Matthew Boulton (1728–1809) and Charles Loraine Smith (1751–1835), a prominent member of the Leicestershire gentry. Boulton later paved the way for several steps in Linwood’s social climb, such as her introduction to the Royal Family. Linwood also formed friendships with prominent collectors whose work she copied. Her use of embroidery, a medium traditionally practiced by upper class women, facilitated these social endeavors. Social mobility and artistic partnership are at the heart of the first known image of Linwood at work, Inside of a Gentleman’s Study (1793) by Henry Singleton (1766–1839), discussed here for the first time (Color Plate 5). Linwood’s temporary shows at the Pantheon (1787) and the Hanover Square Concert Rooms (1798–1801) are the focus of the second chapter. Queen Charlotte, a skilled embroiderer in her own right, attended both exhibitions, and her support was instrumental to Linwood’s advancement.55 She parlayed this public success into access to art collections from which she created her replicas. It was at the Pantheon and Hanover Square exhibitions that Linwood’s love of landscape painting and its creatures first emerged as part of a larger celebration of British identity. The Hanover Square exhibition earned Linwood sustained public recognition, a facet of the nuanced definition of professional artistic activity at the heart of the second chapter. She used her financial success there to commission several portraits

12

The Art of Mary Linwood

that emphasized her decorum and erudition. These images and flattering periodical articles, the subject of the third chapter, ameliorated her public exhibition of artistic talent, considered unbecoming for a woman. The ticket sales from this three-year show also funded a quick trip to Paris as well as four more short-term exhibitions in Scotland and Ireland between 1804 and 1807. These exhibitions in turn helped to finance the rent and renovation of her last and permanent gallery in London’s Leicester Square, whose rooms are the subject of the fourth and fifth chapters. Linwood’s spacious Leicester Square gallery and the publications that accompanied the exhibitions celebrated British identity in several ways. In the fourth chapter, I argue that the installations expressed different facets of early-nineteenth-century British culture and identity, most of which had to do with types of geographic terrain. The Grove, Ruins, and Cottage are analyzed in relation to the ideal of the picturesque amidst the disappearance of the rural landscape. Linwood’s exhibition catalogues also celebrated English talent. Many of their textual entries featured excerpts from British poets. As a teacher, she also wanted to improve her visitors’ understanding of past, present, and future English art, a goal shared by the Royal Academy. Ultimately, Linwood’s gallery was an embodiment of her cultural patriotism, a behavior steeped in conventionality, unlike the public display of her art. The final room in Linwood’s gallery, the Scripture Room, offered its visitors journeys to a more distant past than the other installations. It featured copies after Raphael (1483–1520), Carlo Maratti (1625–1713), Carlo Dolci (1616–86), and Ludovico Carracci (1555–1619), artists whose work was sought after by connoisseurs and collectors both in England and abroad. The Scripture Room represents another step in Linwood’s cultural patriotism, for it encouraged her visitors to equate the replicas in the previous rooms with her copies of famous Italian Renaissance and Baroque paintings. This juxtaposition indicated that a national school of British painting was poised to take its place amongst Continental schools, an effort both Reynolds and the British Institution, which was established the same year that Linwood acquired the Leicester Square space, encouraged. Chapter  5 examines the Scripture Room in the context of engagement with Reynolds’ theories and Royal Academy display techniques. Unlike the other rooms in Linwood’s gallery, most of the textiles (three out of four) from the Scripture Room survive, which provides a unique opportunity to create a textual reconstruction of this space.56 The fifth chapter also highlights my recent discovery of the Dolci replica in the Royal Collection, which has only been rarely seen since Linwood’s death. The replica of Salvator Mundi after Dolci was particularly important for Linwood, for it was the first of these four that she created. She refused to part with it, even when the owner of the original painting, the Earl of Exeter, wanted to buy it. In a final act of cultural agency, in 1845, Linwood left the Dolci replica to Queen Charlotte’s granddaughter, Queen Victoria, as a means of acknowledging the royal support that she had received decades before. In the final chapter, I argue that the reception (both past and current) of Linwood’s work would have been different if she had been a part of the Neo-Gothic, Pre-Raphaelite, or Arts and Crafts movements, all of which celebrated a return to a mythical past. Her nostalgic historicism foreshadowed the revivalist efforts of

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William Morris, who later played a key role in the 1872 foundation of the Royal School of Art Needlework (RSAN) and advocated the creation of textiles using pre-industrial techniques. Morris, along with Walter Crane and Edward BurneJones, popularized the genre of art embroidery in the late nineteenth century. Their endeavors succeeded in part because of their connections to prominent cultural institutions like the RSAN and the South Kensington Museum (now known as the Victoria & Albert). The fame of artists like Morris, Crane, and Burne-Jones has been bolstered by institutional privilege and the monographic genre, both of which are closely aligned with Vasarian historiography. In her introduction to the anthology Singular Women: Writing the Artist, Kristen Frederickson considers whether feminist art historians should even use the monograph when writing about female artists because of its “tendency … to privilege an appearance of coherence and a seamless historical narrative over a more honest telling in which gaps and contradictions play a role.”57 In the same volume, contributor Nancy Gruskin succinctly describes this phenomenon as the “monograph trap” when writing about the early modern American architect Eleanor Raymond (1887–1989).58 In their re-thinking of the genre, Frederickson and Gruskin both point to post-structuralism’s suspicious evasion of biography that occurred at the same time that women were finally being added to the canon.59 For Gruskin, however, some biography was necessary to discuss Raymond, about whom very little had been written, not unlike Linwood. Gruskin’s solution was to rebuild the monograph from a feminist perspective, one that offered a critical examination of Raymond’s career and a discussion of why and how it had been overlooked in most accounts of twentieth-century architecture. Linwood’s prolonged career, with its lengthy breaks, may also be used to interrogate and point out the shortcomings of the monograph, such as its tendency to present its singular subject as an anomaly. While Linwood’s successful gallery was unique, she was not anomalous, for she was one of many female artists working outside the Academy and other sites of exclusion. This population is easier to recognize if a more comprehensive definition of professionalism is employed. By contextualizing Linwood’s public success amongst the efforts of her fellow artists (especially women), I hope to reclaim the monographic genre for the field of gender studies.

14

1

Embroidery, Education, and Commerce: Linwood’s Early Years

The initial success of Linwood’s Leicester Square gallery stemmed in part from her unique public use of a medium that had been traditionally practiced by upper-class women.1 Royal embroiderers like Katherine of Aragon, her daughter Queen Mary and stepdaughter Queen Elizabeth I, for example, were known for their skill with a needle, which they used to produce domestic decoration and gifts for their inner circles.2 In these elite households, amateur and professional embroidery often existed side by side. While smaller projects were left to family members, professional embroiderers of both sexes were hired to produce larger furnishings and ceremonial textiles.3 An abundance of native skill and the ready availability of wool helped to make England famous for its high-quality needlework, called Opus Anglicanum (English work), especially between the thirteenth and the sixteenth centuries.4 By the beginning of the sixteenth century, an increase in female literacy and the publication of the first pattern book made needlework increasingly available to women from modest backgrounds.5 In Pens and Needles, Susan Frye argues that the pattern books created a “fantasy of connection to elite needleworkers [that was] marketed to women despite the fact that during the seventeenth century fine needlework was moving down the social scale instead of up.”6 While needlework allowed Linwood to participate in the professional and predominantly masculine London art world, it was also a tool of social mobility, as she built relationships with prominent connoisseurs and collectors.7

A Family of Creative Entrepreneurs Linwood’s early years were spent in Birmingham and Leicester, Midland cities that were part of the first wave of the British Industrial Revolution. Born into a craftsman’s family, she acquired an early awareness of entrepreneurial and artistic strategies that subsequently contributed to her professional success. The family’s production of luxury goods and ownership of a boarding school, for example, created an environment where cultural, social, and artistic knowledge were highly prized, lessons that she later incorporated into her exhibition venues. In this chapter, I analyze the broader themes

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The Art of Mary Linwood

of the education of English girls, the commercialization of embroidery, and social identity in relation to Linwood’s upbringing. Linwood’s relationship with the Boulton family of Birmingham reveals significant information about her family’s boarding school and the needs and interests of the two families, which included mentorship, artistic objects, and social mobility. Boulton’s daughter and niece attended the school between 1785 and 1787, where they watched Linwood at work on her replicas, a process described in this chapter. An analysis of Linwood’s multivalent embroidered portrait of 1786 (Color Plate 2), commissioned on the cusp of her national debut, concludes the chapter. The textile is remarkable both for what it illustrates and even more so for what it sidesteps, namely, her provincial origins in a craftsman’s family. Instead, the portrait speaks to both her cultural and creative ambitions, for it presents its subject as an aristocratic connoisseur while simultaneously serving as an artist’s statement in each of her exhibition venues. Linwood’s maternal grandfather, John Turner (d. 1788), was a prosperous buckle maker with shops in both London and Birmingham. He also created silver snuffboxes, clasps, and seals. On March 19, 1753, his eldest child Hannah Turner (1724/5–1804) married linen draper Matthew Linwood (1726–83) at St. Philip’s in Birmingham. Born there on July 18, 1755, Mary was their second child and eldest daughter.8 She was educated at home before briefly attending a Dame’s School run by a Mrs. Horton in Birmingham.9 In 1763 the family moved to Leicester, a center of textile production, particularly cotton hosiery and worsted wool, which Hannah and Mary later used in their embroidery.10 Four years later, Matthew, a shadowy figure in relation to his wife, opened the Wine Vault, a shop that sold luxury imported wines such as madeira, claret, and burgundy.11 Mary’s older brother Matthew (1754–1826) worked in London and Birmingham designing luxury items like silver rattles, snuffboxes, and wine bottle decorations.12 Their younger brother John (1760–1840) made tea urns, saddlery adornments, and chair molding. The family’s expertise in artfully made luxury objects (made in batches) undoubtedly influenced Linwood’s specialization in high-quality replicas of oil paintings. The familial environment also made her keenly aware of the relationship between material goods and social identity, a lesson that would serve her well as a teacher and gallery owner.

The Education of Girls, Needlework, and Social Mobility In late 1763, Hannah Linwood opened a boarding school in her Leicester home, another business venture that brought the family into contact with people from different social classes. Hannah’s father John loaned her money to establish the school, an indication that Matthew Linwood’s wine shop was not entirely successful. It eventually faded into oblivion, while the school, the primary means of support for the family, was listed in local directories until the 1840s. The school quickly became too large for the family home, and in early 1764, Hannah moved it to a separate location at the top of Belgrave Gate, a quiet part of the city.13 There it became known as the Priory because of the building’s former religious use, but its nickname also connoted a community of women who came together to learn and sew, as the Linwoods and their students did.

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At some point in the early 1770s, Mary Linwood joined the Priory’s staff, teaching girls from prosperous Leicester, Birmingham, and London families. In the 1790s, Hannah Linwood’s health began to fade, and Mary took on more leadership responsibilities. The Priory’s furnishings also contributed to a comfortably elegant environment for the Linwoods’ pupils. The breakfast room was a locus of activity, home to needlework frames, a spinet, several desks, palettes, inkstands, portable sketching stands, leather drawing cases, japanned paint boxes and colors. These items helped the girls master accomplishment art, the perfect level of artistic talent that would help them marry well and decorate their marital homes. At the Priory, fireplaces decorated with antique metal work warmed the various rooms, while japanned fire screens made by the students protected the Kidderminster carpets locally produced by some of the Linwoods’ contacts in the textile industry. A Broadwood pianoforte and a massive collection of books kept the girls occupied and made the students feel more at home. Embroidery instruction occurred in the schoolroom, where they learned on tambour hoops and larger rectangular frames.14 The Priory’s large, communal student bedroom was furnished with several sets of half tester (canopy) bedsteads, feather beds, and matching furniture; the contents suggest that two girls slept in each bed.15 The long attic almost certainly housed students, for it was furnished in an identical way. Linwood’s watercolor depiction of the Priory’s facade also attests to the school’s security and prosperity, seen in its mullioned windows and elaborately decorated entrance (Figure 1.1). The Priory was part of a golden educational age for English women. Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, the number of schools for girls in the British Isles increased, resulting in a rise in female literacy to about 50 percent.16 The swell in educational opportunities for girls across social classes produced beautiful examples of English embroidery that required time and attention to detail, things that helped teach young women the feminine virtues of patience, restraint, and self-discipline.17

Figure 1.1  Priory, 1826, Mary Linwood, Leicester Museums and Galleries.

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The Art of Mary Linwood

Popular imagery included Biblical heroines, letters of the alphabet, and personal motifs. Embroidered maps or map samplers were also very popular with teachers and their pupils, for they offered a way to teach both embroidery and geography.18 Samplers could also play an important part in marriage negotiations, since they displayed the skill of their makers and the promise of domestic decoration. Eighteenth and early nineteenth-century reformers and writers, inspired in part by the changing status of girls’ education, had a variety of views on what should be taught. The status of embroidery, which was increasingly practiced by the middle class, drew a great deal of attention. Anglo-Irish educator Maria Edgeworth, herself a skilled embroiderer, believed that needlework reinforced the role and place of women in the domestic sphere, regardless of social class.19 Similarly, for Rousseau, women should use embroidery to embellish their natural environment, the home. In Émile, Rousseau suggested that a little drawing instruction was appropriate for women as a means of learning embroidery: I would not have them taught landscape and still less figure painting. Leaves, fruit, flowers, draperies, anything that will make an elegant trimming for the accessories of the toilette and enable the girl to design her own embroidery … that will be quite enough.20

Though Rousseau would have discouraged it, copying the work of others in embroidered form allowed Linwood and other women to draw figures and landscape. Linwood’s skill at embroidery—and scenes of rural life that combined landscape and figural representation in particular—brought her public notice at a time when privacy and modesty were the epitome of feminine perfection. Some reformers condemned the democratization of drawing room skills like embroidery for they no longer only signified the upper classes. Hannah More and Samuel Richardson were alarmed by the increase in the exhibition of accomplishment art by women who did not know (or, perhaps more problematically, ignored) the rules of polite society. Richardson also viewed needlework as a waste of time that stifled women’s intelligence, a point with which Wollstonecraft agreed. Her critique was quite nuanced and tied to several economic tiers. It was fine for those women who needed to earn a living as milliners, dressmakers, or tailors, but it should not be used to confine girls to the needle and the domestic sphere.21 For novelist Jane Austen, needlework was an important part of this sphere, as it symbolized sociability and industry, especially amongst members of her social class, the gentry.22 A skilled embroiderer, Austen created needle cases (then called house wifes) for those in her close circle.23 In contrast, a lack of such skill was a sign of stupidity and laziness in her novels. In Sense and Sensibility, for example, Mrs. Jennings points to her daughter Charlotte’s meager landscape in colored silks as an example of mediocre accomplishment art, the only souvenir of a seven-year stay at a great boarding school.24 Outside of a school setting, women could teach themselves embroidery by purchasing a prefabricated needlework kit containing a template, embroidery thread, and fabric; the kits were widely available in London stores by the end of the eighteenth century.25 Women’s periodicals also helped make embroidery a more affordable

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19

hobby. In 1770, the Lady’s Monthly Museum and the Lady’s Magazine or Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex began to publish needlework patterns made from prints after paintings by John Hoppner, William Beechey, and Adam Buck.26 Prints were often used as templates for needlework, for they could be easily traced and pounced for transfer to a fabric support.27 By the late eighteenth century, publishers began to print imagery directly onto fabric so that women could do away with tracing and pouncing.28 The commercialization of artistic supplies made them available to customers from a diverse social base, which ultimately devalued the status of the art that they produced, as Amanda Vickery and Ann Bermingham have demonstrated.29 Eighteenth-century boarding schools provided instruction in several types of needlework, building on skills that young girls began learning at home.30 At the Priory, for example, the girls honed their plain needlework (straight, back, and running stitches), which was used in the creation and care of household textiles.31 Next, they moved on to fancy needlework, ornamental stitches that decorated clothing and household furnishings. While Linwood’s own replicas were inventive and her display practices were often innovative, the teaching of these techniques at the family boarding school was more formulaic and based on the paintings and prints in her collection. Despite this uniformity, its instruction relied on Hannah and Mary Linwood’s individual skill, thus emulating the older transmission of needlework skill in elite households, from teacher to students (or mother to daughter) within a refined domestic environment, the boarding school. The standard curriculum at most girls’ boarding schools in late eighteenth-century England included reading, writing, geography, basic math, music, and embroidery. The Priory advertisements offered instruction in “every useful and genteel accomplishment,” which also included French, Italian, dancing, drawing, and painting.32 According to Mary Delany, embroidery was particularly important for young women who wanted to marry well. For example, in 1774, she advised a young female friend to employ two hours every day in plain work [needlework] and making up your own things; it is an accomplishment necessary for every gentlewoman, and when you are in circumstances to make it less necessary or convenient you will be better able to know when it is well done for you ….if you have learned to draw, give one hour to that every day, but not to interfere, with what is more necessary.33

The artistic instruction that Hannah and Mary Linwood offered at the Priory followed Delany’s prescription, for it encouraged women to make objects for private use, unlike the textiles that they themselves produced. In line with Delany’s precept, Linwood was also a gifted draftsman, as her watercolor depiction of the Priory demonstrates. At the Priory, the students honed their cultural knowledge and aesthetic taste through their study of textiles, prints, and oil paintings; this awareness improved their marriage prospects. According to the school’s advertisements, its students were “genteelly boarded”—they could acquire a polite education and valuable skills there, particularly in the realm of needlework. For example, one ad offered instruction in the decoration of gentlemen’s waistcoats and ladies’ shoes with fancy needlework.34 Pupils amplified their artistic knowledge by witnessing Linwood embroidering

20

The Art of Mary Linwood

in their schoolroom, where they could study the oil paintings and prints that were the prototypes for her replicas. Such aspirations for the Linwoods’ school were also reflected in the Leicester City Directories, where the Priory was listed under schools for Nobility and Gentry between 1809 and 1845. Thus, artistic instruction there could be socially fluid, signifying refinement, a polite education, and genteel society, even for those girls who came from modest and/or mercantile backgrounds. Such cultural know-how was particularly attractive to inventor Matthew Boulton, for example, who enrolled his daughter and niece there in 1785. In August of 1785, Boulton wrote his daughter that “it is impossible that you can keep company with Miss Linwood without improving your tast [sic] & your hand.”35 Although educational opportunities for women increased in eighteenth-century England, few families had the funds to place their girls in a boarding school like the Priory. In 1785, the tuition, room, and board at the Priory cost approximately £25, with various extras bringing the total to £30 per term, an amount that was comparable to boarding school fees in other regional cities.36 These amounts were out of reach for all but the 7 percent of families in England and Wales who had an annual income of £200 or more.37 As a wealthy inventor and industrialist, Boulton was one of the few who could afford to enroll two of his family members there.

The Boulton and Linwood Families: Mentoring in the Midlands Boulton’s friendship with the Linwood family predated Mary’s birth and had its roots in the industry of their shared hometown of Birmingham. The son of a button and buckle merchant, he marketed gilt metal and cut steel objects such as rattles, toothpick cases, smelling bottles, snuff boxes, corkscrews, and buckles, not unlike those produced by the Linwood family. Boulton was also a founding member of the organization that would come to be known as the Lunar Society, where he formed friendships with inventors and philosophers Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802), Josiah Wedgwood (1730–95), and James Watt (1736–1819), with whom he later produced the steam engine. At Soho House, his Neo-Palladian home and manufactory in Birmingham, the amiable Boulton gathered his diverse array of friends, encouraging the spread of Enlightenment ideals in the Midlands. In a letter to a friend, fellow inventor Joseph Priestley succinctly described the industrialist as “a friend of science as well as a great promoter of the arts.”38 Boulton was especially interested in learning how to make high-quality copies of paintings, an interest that he shared with Linwood.39 He was well-known for his commercial savvy, coupled with his polite behavior, which he hoped would eventually earn him a knighthood.40 Boulton’s business concerns required him to travel frequently to London. In 1783, his wife Ann died suddenly, leaving his fifteen-year-old daughter (also named Anne) (1768–1829) “almost parentless,” in his words.41 The friendship with the Linwoods offered Boulton a solution and in July of 1785, he enrolled her at the Priory in Leicester. He hoped that Hannah and Mary Linwood’s company would console his daughter and improve her embroidery skills.42 In an August 6, 1785 letter, Boulton told Anne that she needed to stay “until you have caught a little of

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that lady’s [Mary’s] fire … a fire that revives dead Game, and makes e’en Lear live again … I hope that I shall see at my return a flower, a silkworm or even a humble strawberry growing from the point of your needle or pencil.”43 These lines refer to Linwood’s replicas of Dead Hare after Birmingham native Moses Haughton the Elder (c. 1735–1804) and Reynolds’s King Lear, both of which the Boulton family had seen at the Priory. Boulton’s correspondence with the Linwoods indicates that he was relieved to have Anne settled at the Priory, for in October 1785, he wrote his “dear Linwoodbine” [Mary] that I had rather she was with you than with any mortal or Goddess I know; & consequently I find it difficult to say let go the soft silken thread by which you hold my Bird [his daughter Anne]. I know not whereabout you have renewed our fates and made us both happy. I do not wonder at your power in fascinating our sex when I perceive your divine dominion over your own. I have so much influence over my children and most persons, but not sufficient to do what you have done … to render banishment from home [Birmingham] into a strange land [Leicester].44

Boulton’s effusive lines reflect his gratitude for Linwood’s nurturing care of his family and suggest that he may have harbored a romantic interest in her.45 Linwood gracefully deflected his overtures and formed a close bond with the young woman whom she called the “agreeable Anne.”46 Drawn together by their common family origins and entrepreneurial endeavors, Linwood and Boulton formed a friendship that was based on their mutual need for mentorship. She cared for his daughter and niece, while he offered advice on her introduction into the London art world.47 Studying needlework at the Priory, Anne Boulton and her cousin Nancy Mynd would have observed several things about their teacher’s working process.48 For example, Linwood almost always created her replicas based on paintings and prints that she owned or borrowed.49 If her prototype was a print, she pounced its outlines directly onto the background to be embroidered.50 When working from a painting, Linwood drew the desired composition directly onto the fabric with an ink pen freehand.51 With this template by her side, she began by embroidering the whole background of her composition, similar to priming a canvas.52 The Boulton/Mynd girls surely noticed other similarities between oil painting and their teacher’s embroidery. In the Priory’s large schoolroom, Linwood embroidered on a large upright frame that resembled an easel.53 William Gardiner, a friend who saw Linwood at work, wrote that Miss Linwood’s mode is analogous to that of a painter; she first sketches the outline, then the parts in detail, and brings out the whole of the design by degrees. I once saw her at work accoutred as she was with pincushions all round her, stuck with needles, threaded with worsted of every colour, and after having touched the picture with a needle, instead a brush, she would recede five or six paces back to view the effect.54

22

The Art of Mary Linwood

Linwood’s working process emulated the act of painting in at least two other ways. When she was unhappy with a stitch, she pulled it out, like a painter painting over his/ her brushstroke. Her long and irregular stitches, the opposite of the uniform ones used in embroidery kits, simulated painterly brushstrokes that cohered into a form from afar. This effect is seen in several parts of the King Lear textile, including Lear’s hair, his stole, and the clouds behind him (Color Plate 6). Between 1775 and 1785, Linwood’s replicas became more ambitious in subject matter and scale, a development that signaled her future professional goals. In the late 1770s, Linwood and her mother participated in the London-based Society of Artists exhibitions. Although only one of those textiles survives, the Society’s exhibition guides indicate that they exhibited still-life images that echoed the measurements of the prints that inspired them.55 In contrast, the replicas that the Boulton family saw at the Priory in August 1785 (Reynolds’s King Lear and Haughton’s Dead Hare) were based on larger paintings that Linwood either owned, saw, or borrowed. Since they were created while she was teaching at the Priory, they likely took three to four months to complete.56 The following year, she submitted the King Lear and Dead Hare, along with a Landscape of her own composition (not a replica), to the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce (RSEAMC) exhibition.57 There she won a medal for the King Lear, whose celebration of both Shakespeare and Reynolds presaged the cultural patriotism seen in her exhibition venues. The same year, Linwood placed three textiles (likely the trio from the RSEAMC exhibition) with a London-based architecture and building firm so that more people could see them.58 By early 1787, one of her textiles had made it further afar, for it hung in the private apartments of Catherine the Great.59 Bolstered by these successes, Linwood sought Boulton’s help with introducing more of her work to London audiences. She also commissioned a portrait from wellknown pastel painter John Russell to help further publicize her needlework. Boulton used his network of social contacts to arrange Linwood’s audience with the queen, whom he praised as a fine draftsman, embroiderer, and supporter of British industry, skills that Linwood also possessed.60 In his letters to Linwood, he wrote that Queen Charlotte, “the great patron of Genius and Female Merit,” would be the avenue to a successful national debut.61 In March 1787, he contacted his friend, the queen’s reader Jean-André DeLuc (1727–1817) to request an audience with the queen. He appealed to DeLuc’s artistic patronage, writing, if I was not persuaded that Miss L’s works exceeded all other of the kind that her Majesty hath ever seen I would not have presumed to have requested your assistance but as I know you have great pleasure in promoting the fine arts & much satisfaction in being instrumental in rewarding real merit and promoting the happiness of the Fair.62

Boulton wrote to DeLuc that his protégé was, like the queen, artistically talented and patriotic in her support of British culture and, in particular, needlework. Linwood’s intentions were to “promote such an emulation amongst the British Ladies as will tend to improve her favourite art,”63 a goal that she began to achieve with her exhibition at the Pantheon.

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Boulton advised Linwood to emphasize her femininity and sociability during the royal audience, features that are highlighted in Russell’s c. 1786 pastel portrait of her. She should present herself as “an independent Gentlewoman who is desirous of paying a compliment to her Majesty,” yet exceed the queen in politeness and generosity. He cautioned Linwood to have modest expectations for financial support, for the queen was very careful with her funds.64 Using an appropriate metaphor, he advised her to temporarily “throw a veil over your Merits …. even if it is made of double milled [very fine] cloth,” until after the private royal audience, when she could start arranging a public exhibition of her work.65 In other words, Linwood should appear as a woman of gentle breeding paying a social visit to a woman with whom she shared a love of the polite accomplishment art of embroidery.

The Royal Introduction Boulton’s efforts on behalf of Linwood quickly succeeded and on March 28, Linwood informed him that she was traveling to London the following week to meet with the queen and DeLuc at Buckingham House. Linwood planned to ask them about possible venues for her public exhibition, as some of her friends had reported that her intended space at Pall Mall (where the Royal Academy exhibited) would not suffice. She enthusiastically wrote to Boulton, [W]ords can but ill express the feelings of a grateful heart, and tho’ I am highly sensible of your kindness I can only say my thanks, you are more than good in your attention to me, and if ever I am admitted to the Royal presence, ‘tis to you and you alone I shall be indebted for the Honour, whoever is my conductor—66

DeLuc introduced Linwood to Queen Charlotte on April 20, 1787, and the following day, she wrote to Boulton about the very encouraging reception. She reported that DeLuc had complimented her work and helped her set up her works in the palace “kindly anxious to set my little performance to the greatest advantage.”67 At noon, the queen appeared and Expess’d herself much pleas’d [with Linwood’s work] and was as flattering in her encomiums as a Monsieur Boulton—she sent for the Princess Royal [Charlotte], Augusta, and Elizabeth—all express’d their approbation.68

After seeing Linwood’s embroidery, Princesses Charlotte and Elizabeth, both of whom were gifted embroiderers, brought their governess Lady Charlotte Finch and several other women at court to see them that afternoon.69 The queen asked Linwood to “return my thanks to Mr. Boulton for the great pleasure he has procur’d me in the sight of works of so much merit, and assure him I think them very beautiful.”70 The audience surpassed Linwood’s expectations, for the queen offered her own recommendations on a public exhibition and asked to keep the textiles overnight so that the king, who was otherwise engaged, could see them the next day.71

24

The Art of Mary Linwood

Linwood wrote to Boulton that the queen “express’d her approbation of my intended Exhibition if I could get a suitable Room, mentioned many of the public ones herself (but they were engag’d) [and said my works] merited attention, and did not doubt but they w[oul]d meet with it, that she sh[oul]d speak of them at her Court.”72 The queen stated that if Linwood were to have an exhibition, she was to inform DeLuc of the address, so that the queen could attend it. If Linwood decided not to have an exhibition, the queen would “send some of the Nobility to see them whom she was certain w[oul] d be delighted with them.” Linwood concluded that “my reception was polite as you could wish it, and greater than I expected,” suggesting that she had performed the role of genteel femininity to perfection.73

Portrait and Self-Portrait Linwood’s audience with the queen featured twenty textiles, including her own embroidered copy of her portrait by Russell, a specialist in pastel who was popular with the royal family.74 The pastel was completed in late 1786, while her textile version dates to early 1787 (Color Plate 8, Color Plate 2). Russell’s pastel of Linwood cleverly conflates abstract ideas with realistic details, a combination that resulted from the conscious exchange between the artist and the sitter, both of whom participated in the meaning of the image.75 The pastel presents much of the same grace that brought Russell professional success. It combines Neoclassical elegance, beauty, and simplicity. Its oval format encircles Linwood’s pretty and youthful features. Her tasteful but modest clothing and dignified pose suggest a well-born young woman, while her unpowdered hair and lack of jewelry highlight her virtue and natural beauty. The pastel portrait notably contains no overt references to embroidery, her Leicester origins, or her work as a teacher there.76 The pastel’s multivalence certainly appealed to Linwood. She appears well-educated, an interpretation that is supported by the copy of Leonardo’s Treatise on Painting on which her left arm leans (Figure  1.2). Compiled by Leonardo’s student Francesco Melzi, the treatise was translated into English in 1716. It contains a loose collection of Leonardo’s notebook entries, many of which argue for the interpretation of painting as a science. Very few of its entries, however, have to do with portraiture or the practice of copying.77 The treatise, coupled with Linwood’s left hand, which points to her temple, likely refers to the intellectual effort and considerable time that went into the production of her textiles.78 The presence of the treatise in the Linwood portrait also refers to several additional artistic motifs and theories. Seen in a simple yet elegant dress, she resembles a muse or allegorical figure, identities that would have softened her participation in the masculine art world, and not an uncommon motif in portraiture at this time.79 The treatise also suggests her familiarity with and appreciation for the arts expressed through her replication of popular paintings. The volume, coupled with the simple yet elegant lines of Linwood’s clothing, evokes the classicizing portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds such as Lady Sarah Bunbury Sacrificing to the Graces (1765) and Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse (1784) (Art Institute of Chicago, Huntington Library). This type of portraiture had a broader market than the history painting

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Figure 1.2  Self Portrait (detail), c. 1786, Mary Linwood, Collection of Tim & Robin Farina, Photo: Tim & Robin Farina.

that he celebrated in his Discourses, published lectures that heralded the arrival of a British school of painting on par with Continental art. Even though Linwood’s particular medium and use of copies kept her from studying with Reynolds, her embroidery practice expressed an allegiance to this native school of modern art; a majority of Linwood’s embroidered replicas were after popular English painters like Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Stubbs. The treatise in the Russell pastel subtly refers to the theoretical underpinnings of her gallery spaces, the first of which opened six months after the portrait was completed. In the galleries, Linwood’s embroidered copies, many of which replicated English paintings, were part of a larger practice of cultural patriotism that characterized her lengthy and pioneering professional career. Linwood’s conversion of the pastel into needlework and the display of the embroidered copy likewise provide important information about her goals and artistic practice, supplementing the meager historical information available. The material features of the textile portrait reveal technical skills that its pastel prototype could not communicate, such as her skill at freehand drawing and embroidery practice. She began the needlework version by sketching (freehand) a copy of Russell’s pastel onto her surface, a tightly woven tammy cloth made of cotton and wool. Linwood’s use of wool for both her surface and most of her thread was one of the many ways that she supported local industry, for Leicester was a center of wool production in the eighteenth century. Woolen thread, however, could be difficult to work with, for its individual fibers do not easily cohere to each other. Nonetheless, she utilized the physical features of the embroidered self-portrait to express the unique qualities of a medium that could imitate both painting and sculpture in an illusionistic way. While she used stitches of varying lengths to suggest brushstrokes, as is seen in her curls and collar, the stitches produced a sculptural effect that is difficult to achieve with pastel (Color Plate 3). For example, the bodice is built up of multiple layers of wool that protrude from the image’s surface, constructing a sculptural profile for the

26

The Art of Mary Linwood

portrait that protrudes from the tammy cloth.80 Contemporary viewers also noticed this effect. In the London Monthly Mirror of 1798, a columnist equated the needle in Linwood’s hand to “the plastic chisel of Praxiteles upon a block of marble in which she touched the groundwork and the figures started into form.”81 The use of the popular artistic language of Neoclassicism here also celebrated the embroiderer. Throughout Linwood’s career, she used this blanketing technique to emphasize the most important parts of her textile copies. Linwood’s replication of the Russell pastel also engaged with artistic ideas of mimesis and illusionism. The braided tie on the bodice dangles three-dimensionally outside the oval picture frame as if it could be untied, reminding the viewer in a very tactile way of the textile medium. Linwood also emphasized the tie’s shadow by rendering it in thick, darker thread, unlike the slivers seen in Russell’s pastel. Enacting a paragone between pastel and wool, Linwood appears to be commenting on the illusionistic qualities of her medium, which more convincingly depicts a shadow. How better to render a tie and ruffled bodice than using thread? Linwood’s creative reinterpretation of the Russell pastel seems to place her within a tradition of artistic rivalry that stretched back to Pliny the Elder’s tale of painters Zeuxis and Parrhesias, who strove to complete the most mimetic painting.82 The blanketing and the hanging tie, along with her other technical choices, emphasized the presence and action of her own hand.83 The sway of the tie mimics the kinetic motion of Linwood’s fingers as they created it, an example of the bodily empiricism acquired through years of embroidery.84 The modifications thus form an artistic signature in lieu of an actual monogram, transforming her from the passive subject in Russell’s pastel to the creator of an embroidered self-portrait, a rare example of the genre (Color Plate 2).85 In the eighteenth century, portraiture fulfilled a variety of goals, including verisimilitude, social aspirations, and the construction of gender, features that are all present in Russell’s portrait of Linwood. Despite its versatility, however, the genre often occupied an uneasy place in the Royal Academy’s artistic hierarchy because of its overt promotion of its patron. It was associated with likeness and copying rather than narrative and originality, more admirable qualities found in history paintings.86 One of the most important features of Linwood’s practice, however, was the act of copying, so her embroidered (self-)portrait was the perfect image to underline her practice. It is a copy of a copy of its subject, who was often physically present when the work was exhibited in her gallery spaces. Her likeness is seen here, but so is her artistic practice, which is articulated through the materiality of her stitches. Linwood’s embroidered self-portrait played an important part in her social and artistic strategy.87 It symbolized the artistic transformation that occurred when she replicated a painting and installed it in her gallery spaces. An example of selffashioning, it depicted her as an aristocratic connoisseur, far removed from her humble beginnings. Finally, it was discursive and supplemented the publications that accompanied her exhibitions. At the Pantheon exhibition, it acted as an artist’s statement that spoke to her visitors about the interplay between portrait and selfportrait, original and copy, and amateur and professional in her artistic practice that flourished following the exhibition.

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Linwood’s satisfaction with the Russell portrait was evident in several ways: she commissioned a second pastel to hang in the Priory, and she added two more replicas of his work to her collection in 1798.88 The portrait was aspirational, presenting her as an educated and well-bred young woman, yet the image’s multivalence also downplayed her ambition. Thus, the pastel followed Boulton’s advice to her about the London debut. For a woman from a modest background like Linwood, fame and femininity in late eighteenth-century England could be a precarious mix. Forming a friendship with Boulton, with whom she shared several interests (the Priory, the replication of paintings), helped her to navigate public attention and establish personal and professional networks that propelled her to national fame in the first decade of the nineteenth century. The Russell portrait and subsequent images that she commissioned from other artists were part of that pictorial professional strategy. At the Priory, Mary and Hannah Linwood performed a delicate social balancing act. They offered a genteel education at a significant price, placing themselves in the mercantile realm, a class from which some of their students (or their parents) wished to escape. Mary’s formative years at the Priory undoubtedly taught her the importance of social mobility, a characteristic clearly expressed by the Russell portrait of her. Even as Linwood became more active in London, the Priory and her embroidery practice remained interrelated. At her school, she worked on her replicas and taught needlework, relying on the prints and drawings that she collected, many of which depicted fruit, flowers, shells, and chimney decorations, appropriate subject matter for drawing and embroidery instruction. In the 1790s, the Priory continued to be an integral part of Mary’s artistic practice and life, as she increasingly split her time between needlework exhibitions in London, teaching in Leicester, and visiting private painting collections.89

28

2

The Pantheon and Hanover Square Exhibitions

Two weeks after Linwood’s audience with Queen Charlotte, she opened an exhibition at the Pantheon which featured twenty replicas.1 The show was open from May to September of 1787. Her display and publicity practices there set the precedent for the subsequent exhibitions at the Hanover Square and Leicester Square locations. Linwood’s exhibition guide for the Pantheon underscored her royal support, with an endorsement from the queen and her daughters and a decorative crown adorning its pages (Figure  2.1).2 The queen’s support remained key to Linwood’s success well into the early-nineteenth century. It brought visitors to the exhibitions and facilitated Linwood’s relationships with prominent collectors, who allowed her to replicate their paintings for display. Her savvy use of publications and publicity, an important step in her professional development, was first seen at the Pantheon in the form of exhibition guides and targeted advertising. The show also highlighted Linwood’s nascent cultural patriotism, or support of British art and culture, as well as her use of replicas to commemorate recently deceased artists, practices which were seen in each of her subsequent venues. Linwood’s newfound artistic and social status is expressed in several portraits discussed here for the first time: Inside of a Gentleman’s Study (1783) by Singleton and Mary Linwood (1800) by Maria Hadfield Cosway. These images, along with other portrait commissions analyzed in the following chapter, reveal Linwood’s adroit navigation of her newfound success and publicity. Through portraits, advertising, and periodical articles, she crafted a reputation as a patriotic supporter of British art and philanthropy. This promotional activity mitigated her participation in the rarified  and mostly masculine London art world, the apex of which was the Royal Academy. Like Russell’s pastel portrait of Linwood, the Singleton portrait of her alludes to the overlapping of amateur and professional artistic activity in late-eighteenth-century Georgian art by highlighting collaborations among its privileged subjects. In the final section of this chapter, I examine Singleton’s group portrait The Royal Academicians in General Assembly (1795) to discuss how the exclusion of the majority of professional artists from the Academy, regardless of gender, impacted their careers and place in the art historical canon. To counter this exclusivity, I offer a nuanced definition of professional artistic activity that describes the career of Linwood and many of her brethren.3

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The Art of Mary Linwood

Figure 2.1  Pantheon Exhibition Booklet, 1787, Collection of Author.

Patriotism and the Pantheon Exhibition Between the Pantheon exhibition of 1787 and the opening of the Leicester Square Gallery in 1809, Linwood added a total of forty-six replicas to her collection. This increase would not have been possible without key improvements in the British manufacture of wool and needles, two of Linwood’s most important materials. The mechanization of wool production in the late-eighteenth century made it cheaper for her to purchase large amounts of locally made tammy cloth, the woolen-linen surface on which she embroidered. Linwood’s stitches were also primarily done in woolen thread, which was cheaper than the silken thread that she occasionally employed for details.4 While Linwood’s use of wool was economically driven, it was also an early expression of her cultural patriotism on a local level, for much of her wool came from Leicester.5 The woolen thread was also dyed in her hometown by family friends, and occasionally by Linwood herself.6 The country’s needle-making industry also expanded sharply in the eighteenth century due to a surge in needle demand and a decrease in their production costs.7 Like her wool, Linwood’s large-eye needles were made in her nearby birthplace of Birmingham, renowned as a center of needle production in the eighteenth century.8 These material advancements, in conjunction with Boulton’s support, allowed Linwood to prepare for a national debut. Linwood initially wanted to have her London debut in Pall Mall, an area wellknown for its artistic exhibitions. It was home to the Royal Academy between 1769 and 1780 and to Macklin’s Poets’ Gallery between 1788 and 1800. In the 1780s and

The Pantheon and Hanover Square Exhibitions

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Figure 2.2  Pantheon, c. 1769, unknown artist, a cross section of the rotunda of the Pantheon in Oxford Street, London as designed by James Wyatt.

1790s, the neighborhood was a popular locale for independent artistic exhibitions held by John Singleton Copley (1738–1815), George Trumbull (1756–1843), Thomas Stothard (1755–1834), and others.9 De Loutherbourg, Gainsborough, and Joseph Wright of Derby (1734–97) also held independent exhibitions near this fashionable area. Linwood, however, could not find an affordable space and began to look at other neighborhoods in late March of 1787.10 Shortly thereafter, she had her audience with Queen Charlotte, who very likely suggested the Pantheon as an exhibition space.11 The building, located on the south side of Oxford Street in Soho, was constructed by James Wyatt, an architect whom the queen later employed at Frogmore12 (Figure 2.2). The large structure, now destroyed, included a rotunda, reminiscent of its Roman prototype, and two smaller assembly rooms, one of which was likely the site of Linwood’s exhibition. Its elegant facade evoked the estates that were home to great art collections like the ones that Linwood visited during her lifetime. Although no images of the Pantheon exhibition survive, its small guidebook provides some important clues about her artistic practice. Linwood’s guidebook, which lists the replicas in order of their appearance at the Pantheon, was quickly compiled after her royal audience. It is a simple three-page pamphlet, much shorter than her subsequent gallery guides. Despite its brevity, the publication satisfied several of Linwood’s objectives. The royal endorsement was included on its cover page, and the crown on the back page reiterated the queen’s support. As a souvenir for her visitors, the pamphlet promoted both her gallery and its creator.13 The publication also reinforced the significance of the most important locations in Linwood’s gallery: the first and last sections. For example, the awardwinning King Lear was the first textile that the Pantheon visitors saw. In the guidebook,

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The Art of Mary Linwood

its special status was denoted by poetic verse and a record of its recent award from the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce (RSEAMC). The final textile on view was Linwood’s richly symbolic Self-Portrait, an aide-mémoire of the woman behind the show. The guide also identified her painted prototypes, a necessity because Linwood very infrequently reproduced the signature of the artist whom she copied. Finally, the landscape entries outnumbered the other genres in her guidebook, foreshadowing its popularity in her subsequent gallery spaces. Fifteen out of the twenty textiles at the Pantheon depicted landscape and game, quintessentially English artistic genres.14 The imagery, reminiscent of the Leicestershire rural scenery, provided her urban viewers with a nostalgic view of a disappearing countryside. Fourteen replicas at the debut were copies of paintings by British artists, foreshadowing her permanent gallery space dedicated to a national school of painters. Not surprisingly, several of the artists whom she copied had worked for her mentor Boulton. For example, Linwood exhibited Landscape with Pastoral Figures (c. 1780) after John Daniel Bond (1725–1803), an artist who worked for Boulton at the Soho Manufactory before becoming the region’s leading landscape painter in the last quarter of the eighteenth century.15 Her rendering of A Carp (c. 1782) was based on a painting by James Millar (1735–1805), who exhibited a portrait of Boulton at the 1784 Royal Academy. At the Pantheon, she also exhibited copies of two paintings by Birmingham artist Moses Haughton the Elder (1734–1804), who worked for Boulton at the Soho Manufactory. The two replicas, Hare and Oysters, were based on paintings in her own collection, a practice that she employed throughout her career. Haughton became one of her favorite artists, and she eventually copied five of his images. At the Pantheon exhibition, Linwood’s work also commemorated British artists who had recently died. Five of the landscape views on display were after the gifted watercolor artist and royal instructor Alexander Cozens (1717–86).16 They were likely inspired by images in his New Method of Assisting the Invention of Drawing Original Compositions of Landscape (1785), a copy of which Linwood owned. One of her drawing portfolios at the Priory contained sixteen drawings based on Cozens’s method, in which he encouraged students to invent imaginary rather than topographical views of landscape using rapidly applied blots of ink and watercolor.17 It is not surprising that Linwood, who later created her own three-dimensional landscape installations as part of her exhibition practice, was intrigued by Cozens’s inventive approach to landscape painting. At her debut at the Pantheon, Linwood also exhibited two embroidered depictions of landscape based on her own design. The juxtaposition of these originals indicates that she viewed herself as more than a copyist; she was also an artist and designer, skills that were integral to her later installations at the Hanover Square and  Leicester Square locations. Finally, at the Pantheon, Linwood also exhibited a replica of Landscape View in Wales (c. 1766) after the recently deceased Richard Wilson (1714–82), whom she later described as the English Claude Lorrain.18 A founding member of the Royal Academy, Wilson was an early advocate of the landscape genre, and Linwood’s copies honored the painter while also celebrating an area of England that she often sketched.19 She subsequently used copies to memorialize the deaths of Wright of Derby, Gainsborough, and George Morland (1763–1804).

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In addition to her self-portrait after Russell, Linwood exhibited three historical portraits at the Pantheon, St. Peter after Guido Reni, Eloisa after John Opie, and the award-winning King Lear after Reynolds. The trio of textiles depicted tragic heroes or heroines and were intended to elicit emotional responses from her viewers, a goal that places Linwood within the framework of the Romantic movement. This genre was also popular at the Royal Academy and Macklin’s Poets’ Gallery, which likely encouraged its inclusion at Linwood’s show.20 The St. Peter after Reni was Linwood’s first religious replica and subject matter that she later highlighted in her Scripture Room, a focal point of Chapter 5. Now lost, its oval shape would have dovetailed nicely with similarly shaped portraits like Reynolds’s King Lear and her embroidered SelfPortrait. Linwood’s now-lost replica of Eloisa after Opie depicted the young woman’s efforts to forget her lover Abelard, a popular subject in Georgian art.21 Inspired by the poetry of Alexander Pope (1688–1744), it was an early example of the embroiderer’s cultural patriotism. Linwood based the replica on a colored print that she owned and added some of Pope’s verses to the guidebook’s description of the piece.22 Although only the King Lear and Eloisa were accompanied by poetry in the Pantheon guidebook, Linwood later extended the practice to all her replicas. Linwood’s newspaper advertising for the Pantheon exhibition also reflected a measured and clever use of text. She placed weekly advertisements in the London Times, Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser, and World and Fashionable Advertiser, periodicals that were popular with members of the nobility and gentry, her target audience. Most of the ads used the following wording: Honoured with the Approbation of their Majesties and the Royal Family, and with the Medal of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, &c. MISS LINWOOD’S EXHIBITION of PICTURES: her own Work. Continues open every Day, at the Pantheon, from Nine to Seven o’Clock *.* Admittance One Shilling.–Catalogues gratis.23

The lines reveal several of Linwood’s professional objectives. Her connection to the Royal Family and her recent award receive top billing, echoing their placement in the Pantheon guide. Secondly, she describes her textiles as pictures and “her own work,” promoting them as comparable to their original painted prototypes. The one shilling admission fee included her exhibition guide, a convenient souvenir of the visit.24 Advertising the Pantheon exhibition was initially a costly investment for Linwood, although it eventually paid off. Financial information about the cost of ads in the lateeighteenth century is scarce, but several historians have estimated that a weekly ad in a London newspaper cost 3 to 4 shillings for eighteen lines.25 Although Linwood’s Pantheon ads were half this length, she placed them in multiple newspapers and often on the front page, increasing her advertising costs. Cultural historian Robert Hume’s research on buying power and cultural economics in late-eighteenth-century England provides some necessary context for Linwood’s advertising expenses. According to

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The Art of Mary Linwood

Hume, only a quarter of the British population at the time earned £100 (equivalent to 2000 shillings) a year. If Linwood was part of this group, she could expect to have roughly £8 (160 shillings) per year (or 14 shillings per month) in her pocket after paying for food, shelter, transportation, and clothing.26 Based on Hume’s calculations, Linwood spent most of her disposable income on advertising the Pantheon show.27 Despite its expense, Linwood’s advertising strategy for the Pantheon exhibition was successful in several ways. The show’s duration stretched from its intended four weeks to four months, allowing Linwood to invest in more artistic supplies for her next London exhibition at the Hanover Square Concert Rooms, which was marketed in a similar way. With perhaps a bit of hyperbole, the London Chronicle, Public Advertiser, and General Evening Post reported that the Pantheon exhibition was well attended by “a great number of Noblemen, Gentlemen, and Ladies.”28 Henry Noel, the Earl of Gainsborough, saw the Pantheon show and later visited Linwood in Leicester to watch her at work. He subsequently loaned her several of his paintings by Thomas Gainsborough (no relation) to copy. Linwood’s ticket price of one shilling was socially aspirational, like her advertising. The fee equaled the admission fees at the Royal Academy, Macklin’s Poets’ Gallery, and other metropolitan exhibitions, an indication that she saw her work as part of the landscape of contemporary art exhibitions in the capital city.29 It was also aimed at a well-heeled audience (like Queen Charlotte, Noel and, later, Joseph Farington) who could afford multiple visits to her venues and would appreciate the high quality of her copies.30 When she began to travel with her replicas in 1804, Linwood increased her ticket price to two shillings in order to keep pace with inflation and the costs of a traveling exhibition. In the months leading up to the Pantheon exhibition, Boulton provided Linwood with valuable advice on her royal audience and interactions with the London art world. This counsel, along with royal patronage, cultural patriotism, and an astute use of advertising, helped Linwood to succeed on a national stage. After the Pantheon show ended, she continued to teach in Leicester while creating more replicas, eventually doubling her collection in size by the time of the Hanover Square exhibition in 1798.31 She based some of her new copies on paintings or prints in her own growing art collection. Others were inspired by the London Polygraphic Society exhibitions, which featured high-quality, full-size mechanical copies of famous paintings. Linwood also parlayed her newfound publicity and social savoir-faire into visits with private collectors, whose works she copied for her public exhibitions. Her meetings with them indicate that copies were not as universally derided in the late eighteenth century as academic discourse has concluded. The collectors believed that encouraging the replication of their paintings was advantageous, for it portrayed them in a favorable light and increased the value of their collections. In the absence of a national art gallery, such private collections had a pedagogical role. Even copies of paintings (especially high-quality ones) could educate when they were exhibited publicly, as Linwood’s were. The copies expressed the good taste and benevolence of their owners, as well as helping to preserve and reinforce the elevated status of the original paintings.

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Connoisseurs and Copying During the late-eighteenth century, visits to private art collections were overseen by their owners or trusted housekeepers. Most of Linwood’s known encounters involved the collectors themselves, whose display practices and fiscal decisions influenced her own. For example, in 1789, Linwood stayed at Burleigh House, the home of Henry Cecil, the 1st Marquess of Exeter. There she copied Dolci’s Salvator Mundi and studied the interspersed hang of paintings by Old Masters and contemporary British artists, an arrangement that later influenced the hangs in her Hanover and Leicester Square exhibitions. According to one of Linwood’s nieces, Cecil reputedly offered her 3000 guineas (in today’s currency, $493,000 or £377,500) for the textile copy. She refused his bid, stating that she would never sell a picture.32 If this event truly happened, Linwood’s refusal indicates that she wanted to preserve the integrity of her growing collection and be seen as above financial concerns. She was not, as she had numerous financial obligations to her family and the school in Leicester. By rejecting the offer, Linwood emulated the collecting practices and social behavior of some of the connoisseurs whom she visited rather than of a professional artist beholden to patrons. The refusal also allowed her to maintain a gendered decorum since she supported herself by a drawing room skill. Linwood’s replication of famous paintings similarly followed a practice associated with several aristocratic women who had access to private collections and the leisure time to embroider.33 The public display of this skill, however, went against cultural expectations for wealthy and titled women. Linwood’s astute use of portraiture, publications, and advertising softened the performative aspect of her embroidery practice. Linwood’s interactions with collectors often developed into friendships and reciprocal visits. In September of 1792, Henry Noel, the Earl of Gainsborough, who had seen the Pantheon show, visited her in Leicester at the Priory.34 There he saw Linwood at work on the Tygress after Stubbs (1769) (Color Plate 16). He wrote to his sister about the embroiderer’s “productions,” as he called them: “the Tiger is admirable and the merit of the working in of the Back-ground is astonishing.” Of Linwood’s Landscape by Moonlight after Rubens (1635–40), he wrote, “it is a very fine composition and it does not appear to have lost any of its Effect of Light and Shadow under her hands.” Here he spoke of her ability to create depth with chiaroscuro, a painterly skill that he also observed in her copy of the Salvator Mundi. According to Noel, the Dolci replica “deserves Much Praise. I like it in one respect better than the original, in that not having so much of the green Tint.”35 As a connoisseur, Noel’s complimentary remarks about the dimensional qualities of Linwood’s textile demonstrate that copies were seen in a positive light rather than the negative manner in which Reynolds and some of his contemporaries subsequently wrote about them.36 Linwood’s replication celebrated the artist whom she copied, the discerning eye of a painting’s owner, and her own skill. Noel’s praise, in tandem with her visits to other collectors, indicates that her copying skills were sought after. His visit to Leicester is another example of the social mobility that Linwood experienced after her Pantheon debut. Noel, in support of Linwood’s endeavors, subsequently lent her several paintings to copy, fostering a sociable relationship built not on financial transactions but artistic and cultural values shared by members of the same or similar social class.

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The Art of Mary Linwood

Linwood’s continued public success in London depended on a steady flow of visitors, especially members of the nobility and gentry such as the Royal Family, Cecil, and Noel. The commissioning and display of portraits of herself was one way that she promoted her work. Between 1787 and 1798, she was the subject of eight more portraits, many of which were exhibited at the Royal Academy, where they would have reached a broad audience. Linwood’s Self-Portrait, which hung in a place of honor in each of her venues, presented an image of an educated connoisseur while simultaneously demonstrating her technical skill. It was a portrait of a woman whose professional activity and gallery ownership were tempered by a medium primarily associated with amateurs, embroidery. This self-fashioning, a strategy also used by the successful painters Angelica Kauffman and Mary Moser, was but one key to Linwood’s public success in the 1780s and 1790s.37

The State of the Arts: Inside of a Gentleman’s Study At first glance, Inside of a Gentleman’s Study, a 1793 painting by Henry Singleton, appears to depict a group of well-born artists on a weekend retreat at a country house (Color Plate 5).38 Although most of them engage in individual activities, they are united in their pursuit of the arts. The co-existence of amateur and professional artistic activity is also at the heart of this painting, which depicts Linwood working alongside Leicester Member of Parliament Charles Loraine Smith, who was renowned for the art collection he began building while on his Grand Tour.39 Inside of a Gentleman’s Study was painted during Singleton’s 1793 visit to Loraine Smith’s home, Enderby Hall. During this stay, he painted two more portraits of the Loraine Smiths (as they were known). All three images were exhibited at the Royal Academy exhibitions of 1793 and 1794.40 While Inside of a Gentleman’s Study may depict an actual painting party, it might also be a montage of artists who visited Enderby Hall separately but were connected through their host, philanthropic activities, and a range of artistic endeavors.41 As a conversation piece hung at Enderby Hall, the group portrait likely encouraged the discussion of such topics and memorialized separate events that occurred over time. Whether the group portrait depicted an actual artistic party or an imaginary one, it  reveals Linwood’s use of embroidery as an expression of cultural patriotism and  vehicle of social mobility. She is simultaneously in the midst of a private visit to a country estate and engaged in a patriotic act that brought her public renown. She is seen embroidering a white, red, gold, and black standard for the Leicestershire Yeomanry Cavalry, of which her host was a key member. The Cavalry was one of many volunteer regiments that were formed in England in 1793 to combat clashes with the French Revolutionary forces. A prominent member of the local gentry, Loraine Smith was from a higher social class than Linwood. She made the standard for free, a patriotic act that allowed her access to her host’s considerable art collection and that of his neighbor, Sir Charles Farrell-Skeffington (1742–1815), who also held a high-ranking position in the Cavalry.42 In August 1794, Linwood showed the finished banner to Queen Charlotte and the Royal Family at Windsor Castle.43 One

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Figure  2.3  Skeffington Hall, F. Cary after Mary Linwood, © Royal Collection Trust/His Majesty King Charles III.

week later, Farrell-Skeffington’s wife, Lady Skeffington, presented it to the Yeomanry with Linwood in attendance. The embroiderer was praised for her genius, ingenuity, and patriotism, and a ball was held to commemorate the day.44 The following year, Linwood’s drawing of Skeffington Hall was published in the History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester, further underscoring her personal and artistic connections to both families (Figure 2.3).45 In Inside of a Gentleman’s Study, Loraine Smith is shown at a canvas. To his right, Singleton looks out at the viewer, seemingly taking a break from painting this group portrait, not unlike Velázquez in Las Meninas. Other artistic objects in the painting include a box of paints, portrait busts in the background, and canvases under Singleton’s arm. Perhaps one of them is the group portrait itself, which entered the host’s collection after its completion. Next to Loraine Smith, Linwood embroiders and Elizabeth Ann Skrine, Loraine Smith’s wife, paints on a small easel with the help of Loraine Smith’s hunting friend Lord Maynard (1752–1824). Linwood’s pose echoes that of Skrine; both women sit on elegant chairs that harmonize with the colors of their clothing. They wear light-colored dresses, and Skrine’s cream-colored engageantes (false sleeves) protect her dress from paint. Linwood wears fingerless black gloves, embroidering with her right hand while the banner is held in her left one (Figure 2.4). The relatively small size of the military standard made it possible for Linwood to embroider it on her lap, unlike most of her replicas, which were created on a large easel-like frame. Most of her face is hidden by a tall bonnet known as a chapeau à la Paméla.46 The hat was likely a nod to current fashion as well as another expression of Linwood’s cultural patriotism. Named after Samuel Richardson’s eponymous novel, these hats became a

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The Art of Mary Linwood

Figure 2.4  Inside of a Gentleman’s Study (detail), 1793, Henry Singleton, Private Collection.

symbol of English patriotism following the outbreak of wars with France.47 The simple straw bonnet evoked the virtue of the story’s heroine, for whom embroidery also led to a higher social station.48 Collaboration, one of the hallmarks of Linwood’s professional career, is a focal point of Singleton’s group portrait. The painting on which Loraine Smith works, Litter of Foxes, was a partnership with painter George Morland, who stayed at Enderby Hall in late 1790 and 1791 as he sought refuge from his creditors (Figure  2.5). The two men shared a love of rural life and animal painting. While at Enderby Hall, Morland hunted with Loraine Smith and produced some of his best work, including the Interior of a Horse’s Stable (1791). In exchange for his hospitality, Singleton left Inside of a Gentleman’s Study with his host, who called the painting The State of the Arts, a nickname that highlights its creative focus.49 Furthermore, the various artistic projects in it suggest an overlay between amateur and professional artistic activity, an intersection analyzed in the final section of this chapter. During Linwood’s stay at Enderby Hall, she made a textile copy of A Litter of Foxes, which was later exhibited at the Leicester Square Gallery. The replica simultaneously honored her fox-hunting host and Morland, as well as celebrating a sport viewed as quintessentially British.50 Linwood subsequently made six other replicas after Morland, some of which were inspired by the paintings and prints at Enderby Hall that the painter gave to his host. Her private collection also contained one of Loraine Smith’s animal

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Figure 2.5  Inside of a Gentleman’s Study (detail), 1793, Henry Singleton, Private Collection.

paintings, which she acquired during her stay there.51 For artists working outside the Royal Academy, visits to country house collections provided them with additional patronage possibilities and were an invaluable part of their educational process. These opportunities were especially important to Linwood as she planned the lengthy Hanover Square exhibition, a process that she balanced with her professional and familial responsibilities in Leicester. She was particularly active in local philanthropy, involving her students when possible. Shortly after the visit to Enderby Hall, she and her students staged an unknown play in Leicester. The performance raised £35 for the Leicester Infirmary and Lunatic Asylum, of which Linwood was a lifelong patron.52

Hanover Square (1798–1801) In the closing years of the eighteenth century, diarist Joseph Farington chronicled Linwood’s lengthy preparation for the Hanover Square exhibition, further confirmation of her visibility in the London art world. In December of 1796, Farington reported that Benjamin West (1738–1820), then the president of the Royal Academy, had told him that “Miss Linwood is preparing an Exhibition of needle work as an extraordinary instance of industry. It is calculated that she has worked 15,000 square

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The Art of Mary Linwood

feet of needlework.”53 The long preparation period allowed her to find an exhibition space, plan the hanging of her replicas, and continue the necessary work of teaching at the family school in Leicester. Once again, Queen Charlotte likely helped her protégée find a venue, for Linwood rented the Hanover Square assembly rooms from Sir John Gallini (1728–1805), dancing master to the Royal family.54 The venue was centrally located at the corner of Hanover Square and Hanover Street, less than a mile away from Pall Mall. According to Farington, Linwood paid £1100 for renting the rooms there for three years.55 She rented the main assembly room and several smaller rooms  to accommodate her growing collection. The large size and extended run of the Hanover Square show, which opened on Monday, March 12, 1798, gave Linwood room and time to experiment with display, unlike the Pantheon exhibition.56 The main chamber measured 79 feet (24 m) by 32 feet (9.8 m), a size large enough to display her thirty-seven textiles.57 In the course of the three-year exhibition, Linwood added eight new textiles to her collection, some of which were inspired by her visits to private collections. Transparent paintings on glass by Gainsborough also decorated the venue, which complimented Linwood’s copies of his work.58 Here she began to experiment with the theatrical installation of her finest replicas, like Gainsborough’s Woodman and Salvator Mundi after Dolci. At the Hanover Square exhibition, Linwood’s cultural patriotism was once again highlighted by the artists and subject matter on display. Sixteen of the twenty-three artists featured there were British, and twenty-four of the thirty-seven textiles depicted images of rural woodlands and its creatures. Her passion for British landscape and picturesque imagery was also seen in her Priory library, which contained two of William Gilpin’s publications on the subject.59 Two images of her own ­design— Landscape: A Fishing Party and a second landscape scene—were again exhibited at Hanover Square, while the remaining thirty-five were replicas. In the years between the two exhibitions, Linwood also added several more replicas after Continental painters (Raphael, Ruisdael, and Vernet), which encouraged her visitors to examine the range of textiles comparatively, considering, and perhaps equivocating, modern British painting and Continental traditions, as she had done with her description of Wilson as the English Claude. In essence, Linwood’s copies after contemporary British artists offered a revision to the art historical canon, suggesting that a British school of painting had arrived. Her emphasis on rural subject matter and contemporary British artists was particularly timely in the late 1790s, when the nation’s fears of a French invasion were at a high point. Linwood’s success at Hanover Square was most certainly related to the nationalistic focus of contemporary commercial galleries like Macklin’s Poets’ Gallery (1789–1800), James Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery (1787–1804), Robert Bowyer’s Historic Gallery (1792–1806), James Woodmason’s New Shakespeare Gallery (1794), and Henry Fuseli’s Milton Gallery (1799).60 A 1788 newspaper advertisement for the Macklin Gallery succinctly describes its cultural patriotism: [T]his collection of paintings will be as lasting a monument of the powers of the pencil in England, as the Vatican is at Rome, and the names of Reynolds, Peters, Gainsborough, Stothard, Cosway, and Opie, will be held in as high estimation by foreigners as Raphael, Titian, Guido, Correggio, or any ancient master whatever.61

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Linwood’s Hanover Square exhibition also included replicas of paintings after all these artists, except for Thomas Stothard (1775–1834), who primarily worked as an engraver and book illustrator, fields in which the British excelled. The guide for the Hanover Square exhibition reflects the influence of the popular commemorative galleries, which Linwood very likely visited as she prepared for the show. As Valerie Hedquist has demonstrated, Linwood replicated the exact paintings by Barker, Opie, and Cosway that were exhibited in Macklin’s Gallery. Her guidebook for the exhibition contained the same verses that Macklin had used for these works.62 Yet while Macklin encouraged artists to create a painting based on poetry or prose, Linwood chose the text for her replicas after completing them. As with Macklin’s endeavor, Linwood’s choice of poetry in her catalogues was patriotic. She frequently used lines from Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Cowper, and Thomson excerpted from the volumes in her Priory library.63 Her lengthy preparation period for the exhibition and increased financial resources also allowed her to make the Hanover Square guide considerably longer than the Pantheon pamphlet. The publication began to act as a true guide, steering her viewers through the show’s multiple rooms and suggesting how they should respond to the textiles, a goal that should be viewed within the larger context of the Romantic movement. Throughout the course of the three-year Hanover Square exhibition, she continued to revise the guide and published a new one each year, a practice that Macklin also followed in his exhibition. Despite the success of Linwood’s galleries, they have been poorly chronicled in relation to the aforementioned galleries, which were financial failures. Their business model primarily relied on the sale of paintings and prints and made them susceptible to entanglements with print publishers and living artists. Furthermore, following the onset of the Napoleonic conflicts, the export market for prints collapsed. The demand for and price of prints plummeted, which hurt the galleries and publishers. Conversely, the lowered cost of prints benefited Linwood since they served as the source for some of her replicas. Her acquisition and use of prints, especially during the anti-French embargo of the 1790s, can be seen as another expression of her cultural patriotism. By acquiring prints, she aided an industry at which the British excelled, perhaps more so than any other European country. At the Hanover Square exhibition, visitors observed Linwood’s memorializing use of replicas, a practice that she had begun at the Pantheon. Three of the replicas were after Wright of Derby, who died in 1797. The year after his death, she exhibited them for the first time: Cottage in Flames (1786), Landscape: Effect of Moonlight near the Head of Lake Albano (c. 1790), and Virgil’s Tomb by Moonlight (1782). The first was based on a painting that she purchased directly from the painter. Mechanical paintings at the Polygraphic Society were the likely inspiration for Landscape: Effect of Moonlight near the Head of Lake Albano, in addition to a fourth Wrightian replica that Linwood added to the Hanover Square exhibition in 1801, A View of Mt. Vesuvius. As someone who never traveled to Italy, Linwood was likely fascinated by Wright’s exotic historical sites.64 The sublime images of Italian landscape reflected the diversity of her topographic interests. They also contrasted with the picturesque scenes of English countryside that were frequently seen in her exhibition. Linwood hung her textiles at the Hanover Square venue in order of importance, as she had at the Pantheon. Depictions of English landscape continued to dominate her

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The Art of Mary Linwood

display. She strategically placed her two Landscape Scenes (of her own design) next to three of her replicas after Reynolds. In 1800, Linwood replaced her embroidered self-portrait with an oil portrait that she had commissioned from Hoppner, which also showcased the importance of landscape to her (Cover Image). As Chapter 3 makes clear, the portrait (the only oil painting in the Hanover Square gallery) was both a symbol of her growing success and a clear articulation of her goals for a gallery dedicated to the celebration of British art. In the last room in the gallery, visitors encountered Linwood’s most accomplished copies of seminal paintings. These included the Salvator Mundi after Dolci and the Woodman after Gainsborough, which were placed in several specially decorated small rooms, a practice that came to its fullest expression in the Leicester Square venue. In the spring of 1798, soon after the gallery’s opening, London tourist Caroline Lybbe Powys described her reaction to the show. [It] fully answered every expectation; indeed it is beyond description. [Linwood’s works] are chiefly taken from the most celebrated artists, as Raphael, Guido, Rubens, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Stubbs, Opie … In the inner apartment is a fine whole-length Salvator Mundi by Carlo Dolci. We observed several Catholic gentlemen take off their hats as they stood admiring this fine portrait!65

Linwood’s replicas, despite their derivative origins, often aroused intense emotions in her visitors. The Catholic gentlemen in Powys’s account, for example, reacted to the textile as if were a religious icon, rather than a mere copy. In 1798, Linwood began to blanket the London newspapers with ads for the Hanover Square Gallery exhibition. She placed weekly advertisements in the London Times, Morning Chronicle, True Briton 1793, and the Morning Post and Gazetteer, Tory newspapers that were popular with the wealthy occupants of the Mayfair neighborhood surrounding the gallery’s venue.66 At first, her ads were concise, in part because she placed them on the expensive front page of multiple newspapers, where they were the most visible. The classifieds initially used the following text: MISS LINWOOD’S EXHIBITION, at the HANOVER-SQUARE CONCERT ROOMS, Continues open every Day. Sundays excepted. Admittance 1s.67

The ads were often adjacent to those for the Milton Gallery and the Bowyer Historical Gallery, suggesting that her venue was viewed in a similar vein.68 In 1798, her advertising began to include references to articles about her. Soon after, the ads listed new additions to the collection such as the Gainsborough replicas and the Hoppner oil portrait, which could encourage repeat visits.69 Linwood’s publicity efforts quickly bore fruit, attracting many tourists to her exhibition. The presence of well-known visitors there represented another step in her  carefully crafted publicity efforts and further expanded her social network. A month before the show’s opening in March of 1798, Linwood wrote excitedly to Boulton that she had received “two Gracious messages” from the queen, who “will

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Figure 2.6  Admission ticket or autograph of Mary Linwood, c. 1798, © Royal Academy of Arts.

visit the Ex (exhibition) whenever I wish it.”70 Farington’s papers include either Linwood’s autograph or an admission ticket to the Hanover Square exhibition; he visited it twice on April 18 and 27, 1798, noting that it was especially crowded on his first visit (Figure  2.6).71 Farington remained interested in Linwood’s work well into the nineteenth century, an indication of her status in the London art world. Actress Sarah Siddons (1755–1831) also saw this exhibition in the summer of 1798, noting it in a letter to her dear friend Mrs. Pennington.72 In the first week of June 1799, writer and philosopher William Godwin (1756–1836), widower of Mary Wollstonecraft, visited the Hanover Square Gallery, the Milton Gallery, and a panorama.73 In 1800, guidebook author John Feltham (fl. 1780–1803) wrote about Linwood’s popularity, echoing some of Caroline Lybbe Powys’s comments. According to Feltham, Linwood’s gallery “had become a favorite morning lounge for the nobility, gentry, and foreigners of distinction  … no person ought to leave London without seeing this matchless exhibition.”74 During the three-year exhibition at Hanover Square, Linwood’s renown earned her several imitators. Two months after the show’s opening, the director of a London boarding school, Mrs. Roberts, placed the following classified in the London Times. Any one desirous of being instructed in Miss LINWOOD’s METHOD of WORKING, may be instructed by Mrs. Roberts, of College House Boarding-School, Church-lane, Hammersmith, where a variety of specimens are to be seen.75

In 1800, an ad for a certain “Miss Thompson’s pictures in Wool” appeared next to one for the Hanover Square Gallery in two London newspapers. Miss Thompson’s exhibition featured “the lately discovered Art of Depicting in Wool at Mr. Bowyer’s Gallery,” one of the commemorative galleries mentioned previously. Although Linwood was not mentioned by name, Thompson’s emulation of her was clear, for her show contained replicas after Ludovico Carracci, Rubens, Gainsborough, and Opie, and her hours of operation and ticket price matched those of Linwood.76 Thus, by the midpoint of the Hanover Square exhibition, Linwood had acquired at least two copycats, a clear sign of her professional success.

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The Art of Mary Linwood

Friendships with Maria Cosway and John Constable During the Hanover Square exhibition, Linwood continued visiting private art collections for creative inspiration and to build her social circle. In the fall of 1799, she and painter Maria Cosway were welcomed by Charles Townley (1737–1805), whose London home was a frequent destination for art connoisseurs. Cosway and Linwood became friends in late 1797 or early 1798, after the embroiderer copied Cosway’s Lodona. According to Townley’s diary, over the course of two days at the collector’s estate, both women sketched a bust of Minerva in his collection.77 Cosway also used the opportunity to work on a portrait of her friend.78 In addition to their participation in the London art world, the two women were also drawn together by their shared work as teachers, for Cosway ran a school for girls in Knightsbridge, London, between 1797 and 1801.79 Cosway and Linwood’s friendship was forged through creative exchange, a key feature of Linwood’s artistic sociability. Her replication of Lodona marked the only time that she copied the work of a female artist, signaling the importance of their friendship and Cosway’s subject matter, which celebrated England and its beloved poet, Alexander Pope (1688–1744) (Figure  2.7).80 Lodona was commissioned for Macklin’s Poets’ Gallery, where Linwood acquired a print of it on which she based her replica.81 Pope wrote Windsor Forest in 1713 to celebrate the peaceful reign of Queen Anne (1665–1714). In the poem, he used the Thames and its tributaries like Lodona as metaphors for the harmonious relationship between the urban and rural parts of England during the Queen’s years on the throne (1702–14). In Cosway’s image, the viewer sees Lodona as a nymph in Windsor Forest, a seemingly idyllic woodland. Attempting to escape the libidinous Pan, she cries out to the gods to save her and is transformed into an affluent of the Thames. The patriotic and pastoral poem was particularly appealing to Linwood, who owned several volumes of Pope’s poetry and shared his love of England’s geographical diversity.82 The idea of transformation placed within an Arcadian setting would have also resonated for Linwood, whose portraits often included both motifs. After Cosway moved from England to the Continent, Linwood continued to exhibit the (now lost) Lodona replica as a memorial to her friend.83 Cosway and Linwood shared the experience of navigating the male-dominated Georgian art world, a journey that often involved compromise and concession. Cosway’s professional progress through this realm was hindered by her husband, fellow painter Richard Cosway (1742–1821), who forbade the sale of her paintings after they were married. Cosway, however, cultivated relationships with a group of prominent women who augmented her professional opportunities, a professional strategy that Linwood also utilized. Art historian Frances Borzello has argued that Maria Cosway’s folded arms in her 1787 Self-Portrait (now only known through Valentine Green’s engraving) symbolize Richard Cosway’s restrictions.84 Furthermore, the portrait’s only reference to artistic activity is suggested by Cosway’s turban, which can also be read as a fashionable headpiece that harmonizes with her other accessories.85

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Figure  2.7  Lodona, 1792, Bartolozzi after Maria Cosway, © The Trustees of the British Museum.

Cosway’s c. 1799 portrait of Linwood also downplays the embroiderer’s professional artistic activity in favor of emulative gentility (Figure  2.8).86 In the image, the embroiderer is attired a teal dress with fashionable three-quarter length sleeves ending in lace cuffs. A matching fichu decorates the neckline of the dress, which is belted by a white sash. Her powdered and curly hair is mostly restrained by a white hand band, and she wears a gold necklace. Her right hand holds a pen or perhaps a porte crayon, possibly a reference to the sketching expedition in Townley’s diary. It also evokes Linwood’s interrelated roles as teacher and author. A darkening landscape is visible through a window behind her right shoulder.87 Cosway exhibited the portrait at the Royal Academy exhibition of 1800, which brought Linwood free publicity amid the Hanover Square show. The timing of its public display likely explains the lack of overt references to professional artistic activity, likewise seen in Cosway’s Self-Portrait from 1787.88 By the beginning of the nineteenth century, Linwood had reached a considerable degree of renown, built through advantageous friendships, a skillful use of selfpromotion through the display of portraiture, various publications, and targeted

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The Art of Mary Linwood

Figure 2.8  Mary Linwood, c. 1800, Maria Cosway, private collection.

advertising. This placed her in a position to assist other artists, as Boulton had done for her. In 1801, she and John Constable, who shared her love of rural subject matter, were guests of the Whalley family in Great Fenton, Suffolk.89 Soon after they met, she gave him his first commission in London, when she hired him to paint the background of a pastoral scene that she was embroidering.90 This practice, which complicates traditional artistic taxonomies, was not unusual in the early-nineteenth century, for oil paint countered the flatness of the opaque woolen fibers. Constable’s commission from Linwood also plays with the traditional division of labor within a studio, with men completing the most important features, and women relegated to the minor details. While the collaborative image no longer survives, it is another example of the artistic and cultural reciprocity Linwood fostered throughout her life. Twenty years after they met, Constable’s niece Alicia Whalley (c. 1810–60) attended the Priory, where he visited her and Linwood.91 Linwood’s relationships with Constable and Cosway indicate the artistic and economic success that she had earned by the time of the Hanover Square exhibition, a sure sign of professionalism according to contemporaneous standards. She built this reputation in a tactical way. In her portraits and publications produced during this exhibition, she often softened the overt expression of artistic success in favor of a more socially acceptable image of well-mannered intelligence. Yet despite Linwood’s

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calculated efforts, her reputation has suffered, in part due to a restrictive definition of professional artistic activity centered on academy membership and the sale of one’s work, two criteria rooted in the foundation of art history that also slowed the growth of Constable’s and Cosway’s careers.

Members Only: The Parameters of Professionalism Giorgio Vasari, traditionally considered the father of art history, emphasized the role of academic affiliation in his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (1550).92 This publication offered a uniform template for telling the story of artists (mostly male) from different backgrounds. Commercial activity, often a perk of academy membership, also gradually became a marker of professionalism for many Western art historians.93 The formation of various national artistic academies from the sixteenth century onwards changed the meaning of the term professional to include the type of formal training that was available to the predominantly male artists at these institutions. This specialized education, with its Classical roots, differed from the type of experiential learning (often apprenticeships) offered in the guilds. The word professional also helped to delineate the idea of art as an intellectual pursuit as opposed to a craft, a manual task produced by guild members and now primarily associated with women.94 In the early-nineteenth century, the distinction between professional and amateur became further codified and gendered, in large part through the efforts of the Royal Academy, who barred whole genres associated with female artists (needlework, shell painting, high quality copies, etc.).95 Conversely, oil paintings depicting historical scenes, traditionally the purview of male artists, were highly valued by both Academicians and audiences. As a textile copyist, Linwood had at least two strikes against her. The commercialization of art history thus contributed to a polarization of the terms professional and amateur. At the Royal Academy exhibitions, the divide was reinforced by its display and publications, which separated the amateurs (also called honorary exhibitors) from the other artists. In early-Georgian England, however, the distinction between the professional and artistic realms was still evolving and an artist could be described as both.96 According to art historian Kim Sloan, prior to 1780, the word amateur was rarely used in the art world and its definition was not clearly articulated until the end of the eighteenth century.97 Sloan indicates the roots of the word (from the Latin amare—to love) describe someone who loves and understands the arts, regardless of social class. In theory, a professional artist could also be an artistic amateur.98 The portraits that Linwood commissioned during her lifetime cleverly take advantage of this elision, a point I address in the following chapter. The career of Anne Seymour Damer, née Conway (1748–1828), exemplifies Sloan’s argument. Damer’s biographer Allan Cunningham (1784–1842), known as “the Scottish Vasari,” used both professional and amateur to describe the Neoclassical sculptor, whose aristocratic background and marriage limited her professional options. One of the obituaries marking her 1828 death wrote that she was “perhaps the first amateur

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of the day who at the same time was a practitioner of the art.”99 According to art historian Alison Yarrington, the terms amateur and professional have been unevenly applied to female artists and their male contemporaries, in part because women artists were expected to cease commercial activity once they married, a particular challenge for Damer, who endured a bad marriage to a spendthrift.100 The professional paths of fellow Georgian artists Richard and Maria Cosway further demonstrate how this gendered assumption favored Richard rather than his wife, despite her considerable talent. The social expectation of moderate artistic skill (or accomplishment art) in a Georgian bride further muddied the waters by conflating women’s artistic activity with dilettantism.101 Marriage then had a strong chance of erasing or muting the professional career of a female artist or performer.102 It is not surprising that Linwood and other female artists chose to remain single. Art historian Helen Draper’s examination of the career of seventeenth-century painter Mary Cradock Beale (1633–99) suggests an alternative way to approach artistic careers that do not neatly follow the amateur/professional dichotomy.103 Draper offers the possibility of a transition from one realm to the other during an artist’s lifetime. As a young girl, Beale learned how to paint from her father, a Suffolk minister who painted in his spare time, and she began her career by painting portraits as gifts for family and friends.104 She married patent clerk Charles Beale, an unusually progressive husband, who quit his job to manage their household and run her commercial studio. According to Draper, Beale “built upon the virtuous reputation she had gained as a domestic amateur and later relied on this sociable studio model to lend her professional practice the required air of respectability.”105 Beale’s pursuit of her art evolved from a pastime to a means of support as she made valuable business contacts and as her reputation grew, not unlike Linwood’s practice.106 The embroiderer also cultivated a reputation of propriety through portraiture and articles, the subject of the following chapter. Like Beale, Linwood’s work encompassed both professional and amateur activity, for she supported herself through ticket revenues rather than the sale of her work. Cosway and Damer were also active in both realms, further proof that these categories should be not treated in an oppositional, binary manner. Art historians Sloan, Yarrington, and Draper have drawn attention to the necessity of stepping away from Vasarian historiography, a format that views professional artistic success in a narrow and teleological way. This format is often ill-suited to women artists, whose careers were (and often still are) disproportionately halted, postponed, or subsumed into their familial identity.107 Instead, these three scholars view the early modern era with a period eye that acknowledges the still-evolving and potentially complimentary nature of the words amateur and professional.108 Building on their work, I propose an additional way of recognizing professional activity: an artist’s longstanding recognition by a contemporary audience. My definition of professional is in part etymological, for the word traces its origins to the medieval profession of a vow, belief, or knowledge, particularly in a religious context. Profession then implies an audience that witnesses the act.109 According to this standard, the extended success of Linwood’s gallery spaces and her consistent inclusion in contemporary publications all mark her as a professional and working artist, even though she did not sell her work or belong to the Academy, an honor enjoyed by only a few.

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The privilege associated with Royal Academy membership is highlighted in a second painting by Singleton, The Royal Academicians in General Assembly (1795) (Color Plate 9).110 The paintings and sculpture in the painting, all of which are in the Academy’s permanent collection, celebrate the early years of the institution and its membership.111 The image, which depicts a hypothetical gathering, highlights history paintings by John Singleton Copley, John Francis Rigaud (1742–1810), and West. The painting also includes Kauffman’s images of Disegno and Composition (1778–80), two of the four roundels that she painted for the ceiling of the Council Room of the Academy’s first purpose-built home, Somerset House.112 Singleton’s spotlight on Kauffman and Moser in this painting foreshadowed the scholarly attention paid to the duo rather than to lesser-known artists like Linwood.113 Although Kauffman and Moser are in the background of Singleton’s painting, they are placed at the apex of the membership.114 Unlike Zoffany’s Portrait of the Royal Academicians (1771–2), Singleton shows Kauffman and Moser present at one of the institution’s business meetings.115 They stand directly behind then Academy President West, who demonstrated detailed knowledge of Linwood’s preparation for the Hanover Square exhibition. The depiction of Kauffman and Moser here underlines their membership in the organization and their affiliations with the court, for the two women are also nestled between Reynolds’s portraits of the royal couple and Agostino Carlini’s (1718–90) equestrian statuette of the king. The artists’ proximity to the three images of the king and queen points to the privileged royal patronage that accompanied their Academy membership.116 West, Kauffman, and Moser are surrounded by examples of their own work and Singleton notably included more of the women’s artwork in the painting than any other artist, with the understandable exception of founding Academy president Sir Joshua Reynolds.117 Singleton’s group portrait provides an interesting contrast to Zoffany’s image of the Royal Academicians, a painting that is often used to tell the story of gender and Georgian art history (Figure  2.9). Interpretations of Zoffany’s image emphasize the institutional disadvantages suffered by Kauffman and Moser in comparison to their male colleagues, who had access to life study classes and positions of Academy leadership.118 To be sure, women are on the margins of Zoffany’s hypothetical gathering, for Kauffman and Moser are only present by proxy. Their portraits on the back wall stand in for them, for they cannot study the nude male in the foreground, a symbol of the Academy’s highest genre of history painting. Despite the restrictions placed on their Academy membership, however, Kauffman and Moser enjoyed various perks associated with it. Their participation in Academy exhibitions garnered publicity, ensuring that a vast audience would see their paintings on a regular basis, become interested in buying their work, and employ them as teachers, a way that many Academicians supplemented their income. The Academy credentials provided the pair with social cachet and facilitated their professional development, which eventually included informal networks of patronage ultimately extending to the royal court. They have been categorized as the preeminent women artists of the early Georgian period and their careers have overshadowed the efforts of other gifted women artists like Linwood who also experienced professional success during their lifetime.

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Figure  2.9  The Academicians of the Royal Academy, 1771–2, Johann Zoffany, © Royal Collection Trust/His Majesty King Charles III.

In the last twenty years, several art historians have provided a more accurate assessment of women’s participation in the late-eighteenth-century art worlds of London and Paris. Ann Bermingham, Whitney Chadwick, Delia Gaze, Melissa Hyde, Paris Spies-Gans, Amanda Vickery, Charlotte Yeldham, and I are working to shed light on the professional activity of women artists, both Academicians and nonAcademicians.119 Our research has demonstrated that women were visibly active during the eighteenth century, especially outside of the Royal Academy and the Académie Royale. The careers of Cosway, Damer, and Linwood, to name a few, exemplify this point. Writing about the seventeenth century, Draper states, “at most levels of society many women worked, unmarried and married, and some engaged in business activities independently from their husbands.” According to Draper, the queries have all too often been “How many?” and “How important?” rather than “Who were they?”120 The practice of tallying thus runs the risk of marginalizing women artists as exceptions, the textual and numeric equivalent of the profiles of Kauffman and Moser in Zoffany’s group portrait. Relying on a narrow and, at times, anachronistic definition of professional activity focused on academic affiliation and commercial activity has resulted in an incomplete picture of the Georgian art world. A dichotomous use of the terms professional and amateur has also created a narrow chronicle of the period that often places artists like Linwood and Cosway, among others, at a systemic disadvantage. In late-eighteenthcentury London, however, male and female artists were professionally successful in a variety of ways beyond Academy membership. Inspired by the examples of others, Linwood turned to independent exhibitions, first at the Pantheon and then at the

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Hanover Square assembly rooms. While some of her display practices at the Pantheon exhibition set the stage for her later shows, the lengthier preparation period for the Hanover Square show allowed Linwood to pursue more interactive ways of engaging her visitors. These included installations and a more robust exhibition guide that patriotically celebrated the work of British authors, artists, and landscape painters. Linwood also used advertising and networking to bring more people to her exhibitions. Although it was an expensive investment, the tactic was successful, bringing a slew of high-profile visitors to see her work, which led to longer runs for her exhibitions and increased ticket revenue. This public exposure, coupled with royal approval, helped Linwood gain access to private art collections. In the years between the Pantheon and Hanover Square shows, she also expanded her creative network by building reciprocal relationships with several artists including Cosway, Constable, Morland, and Loraine Smith, a practice she continued well into the nineteenth century. These efforts were a logical outgrowth of the promotional efforts that accompanied the Pantheon show. In the following chapter, I analyze Linwood’s ongoing use of advertising, subsequent portrait commissions, and the publication of biographical profiles in various periodicals. All these strategies garnered lasting publicity for her and point to her pioneering role as a female gallery owner in London.121

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3

Portraiture, Publications, and Promotion

In the “Present State of the Manners, Society, Etc., Etc. of the Metropolis of England” (1800), English author and actress Mary Robinson (1758–1800) celebrated the role of women’s contributions to the capital’s cultural landscape. In her list of English actresses, authors, and educators, she named only three artists: Damer, Cosway, and Linwood, describing the embroiderer as one whose “inventive powers have produced new wonders in the labours of genius and ingenuity.”1 As a high-profile visitor to the Hanover Square exhibition, Robinson’s words underline the success of Linwood’s promotional efforts of the 1780s and 1790s, some of which were discussed in the previous chapter. In the following pages, I consider Linwood’s achievement of her professional goals—goals that were also furthered by her friendships with wellborn connoisseurs and aristocrats—through the shrewd use of portraiture and articles, a practice that dated to her London debut. The early nineteenth century brought Linwood increased familial and fiscal responsibilities. By 1800, she was the de facto head of her large extended family, for no close male relatives remained in Leicester. At the same time, Linwood was increasingly well-known in the British capital, as Robinson’s publication indicates. She wisely parlayed this success into an exhibition strategy that accommodated her very modern balancing act between work and family. Faced with her mother’s advancing age, Linwood closed the Hanover Square Gallery in 1801 and opened shorter shows in Edinburgh, Dublin, and Cork between 1804 and 1807 to raise additional funds for her next artistic enterprise, a permanent gallery space in London. Her earnings in these venues also paid for six portraits of the embroiderer, some of which subtly contributed to her professional goals of self-promotion, fame, and a permanent gallery space. Like Cosway’s c. 1800 portrait of Linwood, most of these images—which were produced by John Hoppner, Richard Westall, William Armfield Hobday, William Beechey, Pietro Tomkins, and William Grimaldi—present the embroiderer as a wellborn educator rather than an entrepreneur. Contemporaneous articles complimented this promotional strategy, for they portrayed her as a virtuous and patriotic woman from the upper-middle class, belying her more modest family origins. While archival evidence of Linwood’s involvement in these undertakings varies, most of them reflect the sway of her inner circle. The portraits and articles, the subject of this chapter, crafted a socially acceptable profile for a woman who enjoyed an unusual measure of autonomy in the late Georgian period.

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The Art of Mary Linwood

The Hoppner Portrait: Publicizing Honor in Image In the opening years of the nineteenth century, Boulton, whose health was in decline, mentored Linwood as he could from afar. In his correspondence with her, he stressed the importance of adding new works to her collection, writing that she must “supply Novelty yearly as people will be tired of seeing [the] same thing even if ever so fine.”2 She followed his advice, adding three new works to the Hanover Square Gallery in 1800 that she advertised in the London Morning Chronicle: an oil portrait that she commissioned from Hoppner (Cover Image) and two replicas of the Gainsborough Woodman (full-length and bust versions) (Color Plate 10).3 Linwood hung the oil portrait in the middle of the main room between two embroidered replicas of genre and still life scenes after Russell and Haughton, two of her favorite artists. The threequarter length portrait, which measures 3 x 2.5 feet, took the place of Linwood’s smaller embroidered self-portrait after Russell, which she only occasionally exhibited after 1800.4 The only oil painting in her gallery, the Hoppner portrait illustrated several stages of Linwood’s creative and replication processes. While aspects of the Hoppner commission are unclear, it is obvious that Linwood wanted a prestigious artist to create an image that articulated her artistic practice. When he painted Linwood, Hoppner (1758–1810) was the most successful portraitist in England, for he had been working as Principal Painter to the Prince of Wales since 1793.5 Hoppner also enjoyed several close connections to George III and Queen Charlotte. His mother was an attendant at court, and he later married Phoebe Wright, the daughter of American-born sculptor Patience Wright, who also worked for the queen.6 Hoppner typically charged twenty-five guineas for a three-quarter length portrait. This expense, coupled with his prominence, is further proof of Linwood’s artistic and social success in the British capital.7 The inclusion of material objects closely tied to Linwood’s artistic practice in the Hoppner portrait demonstrates her likely involvement in the commission. The items mark a departure from the artist’s typical attributes for his female sitters, who are most often seen with shawls, hats, and gloves.8 The objects showcase Linwood’s engagement with the art world via the practice of embroidery and her favorite genre of landscape painting, one at which the British excelled. In her left hand, she clasps a small landscape painting that depicts a riverside scene nestled amidst woods and an expansive blue sky.9 The work’s presence also refers to the creation of Linwood’s replicas, which were most often based on a painting or print that she had viewed firsthand. The image was the prototype for a sketch that Linwood made directly onto the heavy tammy cloth surface before beginning to embroider. Her right hand holds a silver clamp that was used to both store the woolen thread and immobilize the cloth on which she stitched.10 The green and yellow sash around her waist symbolizes another part of Linwood’s replication process, for it is comprised of the thread that she used for her compositions. These material items, along with her centrally placed hands, underscore her artistic practice. Not surprisingly, Hoppner lavished attention on the depiction of textiles in the portrait. The loosely painted crimson drapery, a standard studio prop for Hoppner, focuses the viewer’s eyes on Linwood.11 It is also a subtle nod to the dramatic decoration of Linwood’s gallery, where visitors stepped through a curtained space to view her

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embroidered replicas. Like the earlier Russell pastel, Hoppner’s portrait presents Linwood in an unadorned manner—her hair is unpowdered and she wears no jewelry, implying that her beauty and artistic practice are natural and without artifice.12 She is wearing “anti-fashion fashion,” a type of idealized Neoclassical dress that suggested that its owner was more interested in making art than being a work of art.13

A Lodona in London At the turn of the nineteenth century, Linwood was the subject of three more portraits by Richard Westall (1765–1836), William Hobday (1771–1831), and Peltro Tomkins. The images resemble Maria Cosway’s depiction of Lodona (Figure 2.7). In Lodona, the female subject is transformed from a tributary of the Thames to a nymph in an idyllic Windsor Forest, signifying the harmony between urban and rural England. Linwood’s copy of Lodona likely held a special significance for the embroiderer, for it was born of her friendship with Cosway, who was the only female artist whose work she replicated. Like Cosway’s contemporaneous portrait of Linwood, Westall’s small portrait of her (15 ½ x 12 ½ inches) was produced within a framework of artistic reciprocity (Figure 3.1).14 A gifted watercolor painter and Academician, Westall exhibited pastoral

Figure 3.1  Mary Linwood, c. 1800, Richard Westall, Leicester Museums and Galleries.

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The Art of Mary Linwood

scenes at the Shakespeare and Milton galleries, where he and Linwood likely met each other. In 1799, she made an embroidered copy of his Gleaner based on firsthand viewing of the painting. In 1812, Linwood added a second Westall replica to her collection, A Woman and Child Taking Shelter from a Storm, which was based on one of four colored prints of the image that she owned.15 In Westall’s portrait of Linwood, nature’s symbolism is also prominent. Amid forested trees and a stream illuminated by moonlight, Linwood, dressed in classicizing garments, sits on the ground and meets the viewer’s gaze. She wears a ruffled white coat over a belted white gown, whose folds fan out on the ground and echo the water behind her, like Cosway’s Lodona. The uncultivated setting suggests that Linwood’s artistic talent is also innately natural and even more extraordinary because of a lack of academic training. She is elegantly nestled in the forest, and there are no allusions to embroidery or the Hanover Square venue. The porte-crayon and bulging portfolio at the right of the composition are the only references to Linwood’s artistic activity and were attributes shown in other portraits of women artists such as Reynolds’ Portrait of Lady Diana Beauclerk (1763–5) (Kenwood House), an aristocrat often described as a talented amateur artist.16 Cosway’s Lodona and Westall’s portrait became templates for subsequent depictions of Linwood created by Hobday and Tomkins. Despite the uncertainty surrounding the creation of these images, several conclusions can be drawn from their production. Their shared features point to collaboration and copying, also elements of Linwood’s artistic practice. The portraits were created by highly successful artists, signaling Linwood’s prominent artistic and social status by the early nineteenth century. Her potential involvement in their conception, along with that of the Hoppner oil portrait, confirms her financial success and ongoing desire to publicize and promote her gallery efforts. The act of drawing, also an important stage in her replication process, is emphasized in these images, as is the natural world, another feature of her gallery spaces. The presence of these themes suggests that Linwood contributed to the portraits’ creation. Their relative uniformity indicates that she wanted to be represented in a consistent rather than novel way, not surprising given the role of copies in her gallery. Hobday, who hailed from a Birmingham family of manufacturers, came to Linwood’s attention through her friendship with Boulton.17 While information regarding the circumstances surrounding the creation of the Hobday portrait is scarce, he was in high demand as a fashionable portraitist at the time of the Linwood commission in 1801. A regular exhibitor and former student at the Royal Academy, he exhibited A Portrait of a Lady there in 1801, probably the image of Linwood (Figure 3.2).18 The Hobday portrait replicates Westall’s wooded setting, with Linwood looking to her left. Her head is covered by a scarf and her classicizing gown closely resembles the one in Hoppner’s image. Tomkins’s c. 1806 portrait of Linwood is a hybrid of the Westall and Hobday images. As one of Westall’s favorite engravers, Tomkins likely had access to the Westall portrait, from which he copied the setting and Linwood’s direct gaze (Figure 3.3). He also replicated the clothing and the veil seen in the Hobday portrait. Tomkins, who was Historical Engraver to Queen Charlotte, published the print of Linwood seven weeks before she signed the lease on the Leicester Square Gallery. The embroiderer owned twenty-nine of these prints, indicating that this portrait was perhaps part of a promotional effort.19

Portraiture, Publications, and Promotion

Figure 3.2  Mary Linwood, 1801, William Hobday, Leicester Museums and Galleries.

Figure 3.3  Mary Linwood, 1806, Pietro Tomkins, Leicester Museums and Galleries.

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The Art of Mary Linwood

Publications about Linwood The multiple portraits of Linwood produced at the turn of the nineteenth century signaled her heightened professional success. It was also reflected in her appearance in publications like the multi-edition Balnea, the Lady’s Monthly Museum, and Monthly Mirror. These publications and the portraits of her provided the Hanover Square exhibition with additional publicity while simultaneously fostering an image of Linwood as a cultured, virtuous, and patriotic gentlewoman. This message appealed to the middle and upper-middle class women who subscribed to these journals, an audience that Linwood was eager to attract to her gallery with dramatically installed and recently created replicas of beloved English paintings. In 1799, William Beechey produced a miniature portrait of Linwood.20 The image, which Linwood described as “most agreeable” and “the best portrait that has been taken,” likely arose from their mutual connections to the court, where Beechey worked as portrait painter to Queen Charlotte.21 The portrait is now only known through William Ridley’s (1764–1838) stipple engraving (Figure  3.4), which illustrated an article on Linwood in The Monthly Mirror, Or Polite Repository of Amusement and Instruction.22 Linwood’s pedagogical role is emphasized in the Beechey portrait. Modestly dressed, she sits at her desk, at work on school papers, her exhibition catalogues, or perhaps The Monthly Mirror memoir itself. Her pearl necklace and matching bracelet point to her

Figure 3.4  Mary Linwood, 1806, William Beechey/engraving by Ridley, National Galleries of Scotland.

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financial well-being. The simple hairstyle, jewelry, and stylish dress suggest a well-bred and erudite woman, and there are no overt pictorial references to the Hanover Square gallery. Linwood appears as virtuous and above commercial interests, a message that was attractive to her gallery’s visitors and the wealthy connoisseurs whose art she copied. In November of 1799, Linwood wrote to Thomas Hill (1760–1840), a book collector and part owner of The Monthly Mirror, explaining the parameters for the use of Beechey’s portrait. With no husband or father to protect her reputation, Linwood had to be particularly careful with self-presentation, which is evident in the following lines: Sir Wms Painting was painted for a particular purpose, and that I could not admit of a copy,-nor of the other, or any Picture, but on condition that now, or in future whatever print is taken shall not appear, or be sold by any person or in any way whatsoever, but what are attached to your Magazines—not knowing any of the Parties but yourself I must beg of you to send me your word and assurance for them, that it shall never appear but with the Magazine in which it comes out—and upon receipt of such assurance from you, I will immediately forward the Picture to your address.23

Linwood’s anxiety about the image’s distribution is demonstrated by her underscoring, a rare occurrence in her correspondence. Because this women’s periodical was widely read, she was clearly concerned about the dissemination of the image and any of its copies. Beechey’s portrait stresses Linwood’s more appropriately feminine roles as author and teacher rather than the promotion of the Hanover Square gallery, reinforcing the tone of the article in which the portrait appeared. Linwood’s correspondence with Hill also confirms her involvement in the prints stemming from the Beechey portrait. She was particularly worried about the quality of Ridley’s print. In a late 1799 letter to Hill (Ridley’s employer), she asked to “enforce alterations to the print.”24 The engraver did not want to show the print to her again after working on it, a suggestion that Linwood rejected emphatically, underlining the words in her letter. Although Linwood’s changes are unknown, they indicate a careful control of her image. Ridley and Linwood ultimately reached a détente, for he continued to engrave portraits of her. He was also the recipient of a watercolor copy (perhaps by Linwood) of the Cosway portrait of Linwood (Figure 3.5). The handwritten inscription on it states that she gave it to Ridley, who then passed it on to a Mr. Rivers, an artist about whom little is known.25 The opening paragraphs of The Monthly Mirror profile, described as an authentic memoir, emphasize Linwood’s refinement and acumen, qualities visually reinforced through the Beechey portrait.26 The article contains several embellishments, which helped to create a social and intellectual pedigree for its subject. The unknown author (likely Linwood) recounts the artist’s descent from an ancient and respectable Northamptonshire family, some of whom had represented the county in Parliament. This unverifiable account conveniently overlooks her family’s origins in craft and trade.27 The theme of English identity, so important in Linwood’s gallery, is a key feature

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Figure 3.5  Mary Linwood, c. 1800, watercolor by unknown artist, Leicester Museums and Galleries.

in the publication, which lists her alongside noted English authors and educators Sarah Trimmer, Hannah More, Elizabeth Carter, and Elizabeth Inchbald, many of whom were also included in Mary Robinson’s article.28 The Monthly Mirror text also balances Linwood’s promotional activities and the public display of her work with a description of her more conventional practices and beliefs. Its author celebrated the Leicestershire military standard for its design, workmanship, and expression of loyalty, writing, “Miss Linwood is entitled to the patriotic praise of having wrought the first banner which was offered to any military association since the commencement of the present war.” The article also placed her within the elevated context of Neoclassicism, a style that was the status quo in England by the early nineteenth century: “[T]he needle, in her hand, soon became like the plastic chisel of Praxiteles, upon a block of marble: she touched the ground-work, and the figures started into form.”29 Like a sculptor, Linwood shaped raw materials like thread or young minds into a nuanced whole. The simile softened the less orthodox aspects of Linwood’s practice, such as her promotional activities and the public display of her work. The Praxitelean analogy also suggests the three-dimensional aspects of her practice, such as the installations and use of blanketing (multiple layers of thread) to emphasize the most important parts of her textiles. The memoir’s conclusion praises the works that Linwood added to the Hanover Square show in 1799, a detail that indicates her close involvement with the article’s creation.30 In late January 1800, either Linwood or Hill advertised the memoir and the completion of the Beechey portrait in the London Evening Mail.31

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Figure 3.6  Mary Linwood, c. 1800, Ann Jessop Beechey (?), Yale Center for British Art.

The Hanover Square exhibition and its careful promotion brought Linwood a new degree of public recognition and professional activity and she became the subject of several more portraits and articles. An untraced image of Linwood (Figure  3.6) replicates the desk scene in Ridley’s print, emphasizing her intelligence and work ethic. Behind her is a framed textile whose long loop-like stitches echo Linwood’s own. Classically dressed, its female subject is at work, echoing the embroiderer’s pose. The portrait’s unknown artist (perhaps Beechey’s wife, miniaturist Ann Jessop (1764–1833)) added a Classical flourish to it by placing a column behind Linwood’s shoulder, which stresses the timeless qualities of the embroiderer’s work.32 During the Hanover Square exhibition, Linwood was also the subject of several articles in the Lady’s Monthly Museum, a periodical that neatly encapsulated her interwoven occupations of teacher and gallery entrepreneur. As its name suggests, women used the periodical (a monthly miscellany) to educate themselves about biography, history, culture, fashion, theatre, and literature. The August 1798 issue contained a review of the Hanover Square exhibition, which drew particular attention to the replica of Cosway’s Lodona, a possible prototype for the portraits produced of Linwood in the early nineteenth century. The reviewer praised the pedagogical powers of Linwood’s show, stating that “there cannot be a more excellent school for the study of all ladies who are desirous of attaining a proficiency in this wonderful art of needle work.”33 A longer article on her appeared in the July 1800 issue, although most of it was copied verbatim from the Monthly Mirror memoir. Several unverifiable stories reappeared, including her parliamentarian ancestors

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and patronage by Catherine the Great.34 Uniformity of message was more important than novelty in these articles, perhaps not a surprise given Linwood’s gallery of replicas whose innovation was reflected in their thematic installation. Several other factors point to Linwood’s involvement in the July 1800 article, which contained a lengthy description of her exhibition history. The author compared her to other needle painters like Mary Knowles and Lady Elizabeth Baldwyn Yates (d. 1808), one of Reynolds’s close friends, and created an artistic canon for the field. Linwood’s relationships with prominent aristocrats and artists were described publicly, underscoring her social mobility. The article’s illustration (Figure 3.7), an image designed by Rivers and engraved by Ridley, also highlights the practice of needlework, although perhaps not the direct observation of Linwood’s practice.35 She gazes at the viewer while pausing temporarily from embroidering with an awkwardly placed right hand. Extra thread is seen on the left-hand side of the image. The easel on which Linwood was known to work, however, is absent and her textile is smaller than her usual creations.36 Nevertheless, the image is one of only two that depicts her at work, which likely interested some of the women who read the periodical. When the Leicester Square Gallery opened in 1809, Linwood’s exhibition was once more reviewed by the Lady’s Monthly Museum, which praised her rooms for their “elegant and scenic qualities … which heightened the surprising effect of the pictures.”37

Figure  3.7  Mary Linwood, c. 1800, Rivers/engraving by Ridley, Leicester Museums and Galleries.

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In 1799, Londoner George Saville Carey (1743–1807) dedicated several editions of Balnea, Or, an Impartial Description of All the Popular Watering Places in England to Linwood, yet another indication of her increasing stature in the British capital. The two were introduced through Hill, the publisher of The Monthly Mirror.38 They both subscribed to the Balnea, a guide to English towns known for their Roman baths.39 In the introduction, Carey enthused: “Madam, Looking round the world for a Patroness to whom I might wish to address the following observations, I could perceive none at this present era from whom I might arrive more honor, or find one more eminently distinguished than yourself.”40 He used the language of antiquity to praise his dedicatee, writing: [h]ad you lived in the mythological days of old, the transcendent labours of your ingenious hands might have raised your name to a state of immortality, and the sapient God, placed on his bright Parnassian throne, wondering at what you had done, might have added another sister to the celestial NINE, and called her UNICA, for being so great a Mistress of the Phrygian art.41

Elevating Linwood to the status of a muse, the Latin word unica (only) signifies the unique quality of her artwork. He placed her in within an artistic canon, linking her pioneering accomplishments to the Phrygians, an Anatolian group often credited with the invention of embroidery. Their goddess Cybele was often seen with a tympanon, or a circular drum that resembles an embroidery hoop, yet another connection to Linwood’s practice.

Promoting a Permanent Gallery In the course of the Hanover Square exhibition, Linwood laid the plans for the final stage of her professional career: a permanent venue in London dedicated to the celebration of British art. It needed to be large and centrally located, either in the Piccadilly or Leicester Square neighborhoods. To afford this space, however, she needed to save money and feature new subject matter that would attract return visitors. She wrote to Boulton about these concerns.42 He responded: from accidental conversations I have frequently had within the last 2 years respecting the success of your Exhibitions, I have found it a prevailing opinion, amongst persons who know the World, that the profits of it would rapidly decline unless it was shut up for 2 or 3 years & then re-opening of it with the addition of sundry new pieces. Under such circumstances, the Fashion of visiting it, might probably return for 2 or 3 years more, but not longer, unless the spirit of Novelty is annually revived by new & improved pieces, which will solely depend on the preservation of your health, your eyes, & all your ingenious Faculties; which no power on Earth can guarantee.43

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According to Boulton, the Hanover Square exhibition had run its course. She should shut it down and use the next few years to add new pieces to her collection. Boulton, whose own health was in decline, was also concerned with the taxing effects of Linwood’s regular Leicester-London commute, most of which was done via stagecoach and perhaps canal.44 Finally, she must safeguard her health so that she could continue to travel as she wanted.45 Taking Boulton’s advice to heart, Linwood closed the Hanover Square exhibition in April 1801.46 Linwood’s hiatus from London was also well timed in relation to her increased family responsibilities in Leicester.47 As her mother’s physical and financial health declined, Linwood took over the leadership of the family’s boarding school. In August of 1800, Hannah borrowed £600 from Boulton, perhaps to fund the renovations of the Priory. Upon her death in December 1804, Mary took over the loan’s monthly payments of £30.48 She also helped her sister Sarah Markland (1758–1825), who was suddenly widowed with eleven children to raise. In August of 1804, Linwood cosigned Sarah’s £3990 mortgage in Leicester. In an 1805 letter to Boulton, Linwood described her sister’s situation as one “that requires all of the exertion of her relatives and all of the kindness of her friends.”49 Linwood’s quick trip to France in late 1802 was the sole respite in this period of fiscal uncertainty. The journey occurred during the Peace of Amiens, a temporary end to hostilities between England and France caused by the French Revolution. From afar, Boulton continued to fret about the cost of Linwood’s permanent venue, telling her that your mind seems now to be totally absorbed about the means of raising the money without thinking of the danger you run in ruining yourself … in such a compound and precarious undertaking … when the day of repayment arrives, I fear it will be the source of much uneasiness and difficulty to you.50

Boulton was worried about Linwood’s single-mindedness, which he saw as a dangerous and unattractive trait, especially in a woman; yet this quality certainly contributed to her professional success in London. Upon her return from France, however, Linwood reassured her mentor that her caretaking duties still took priority over the professional ones. In a March 1803 letter to Boulton, she wrote “when [in] the tranquility of peace that we have the happiness to enjoy in our own domestic circle, I dwell with more delight—than the most ambitious mind can upon the Riches, Honors & transient pleasures that the world of London can afford.”51 Boulton, bedridden with back pain but happy with her decision, replied that she should enjoy “her Family & her real friends as well as from the sincere applause of honest Britains [sic] which is far more valuable than Diamond Necklaces or Consular Compliments,” referring to her supposed Continental audience with Napoleon.52 Boulton’s words were clearly calculated to take advantage of Linwood’s filial loyalty and national allegiance. Linwood, however, grew restless while at home with her mother in the summer of 1803. She devised a safer but by no means conventional plan to earn money for the London gallery, one that was perhaps inspired by French émigré Marie Tussaud, née Grosholtz (1761–1850). During the Peace of Amiens, Tussaud left Paris to exhibit her wax portraits at London’s Lyceum Theatre. She traveled on to Edinburgh, where

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she opened an exhibition at Lawrie’s Meeting Rooms in June 1803. Tussaud’s show cleverly took advantage of the thirst for French subject matter by featuring images of Napoleon and Josephine Bonaparte and of Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, and other victims of the Reign of Terror.53 Tussaud closed the Edinburgh exhibition in December of 1803, amassing great profits from taking her show to other cities in the British Isles. In early 1804, Linwood rented the same venue and opened her exhibition on March 5 of that year, eventually adding one of her embroidered portraits of Napoleon to the collection. She displayed forty-nine textiles there, an increase of four from the Hanover Square exhibition. Linwood also planned shows in other cities that Tussaud visited, including Glasgow and Dublin.54 Because these cities were on the London theatre circuit, Tussaud and Linwood likely assumed that their dramatic installations would also be popular with these audiences. Local newspaper ads for these shows were often adjacent to each other, suggesting that their shows were viewed in a similar vein.55 These short-term exhibitions helped Linwood raise money and promote her goal of a permanent gallery space in central London. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, few female artists travelled abroad with their entire collection. Linwood chose to do so, a luxury that Tussaud and her fellow country woman Elizabeth Vigée-LeBrun (1755–1842), both royal sympathizers, did not have. Relocation, whether temporary or permanent, presented these women with the challenge of navigating an unknown city in the unusual role of female entrepreneur. In Edinburgh, Tussaud and Linwood employed men to manage their galleries and help them navigate their new cities. Tussaud relied on her sons for this help, while Linwood hired a shadowy figure named James Burton, who began working for her as Hannah Linwood’s health began its final decline.56 Burton worked for Linwood between 1804 and 1807, when he died in Belfast, a city in which she planned an exhibition. This exhibition never came to fruition, likely because of responsibilities in Leicester and time-consuming renovations on the London gallery.57 Although no evidence of a manager exists for her London venues, it is hard to imagine that she did not employ one. In the fall of 1803, Linwood commissioned portrait miniatures of her and her mother, perhaps to temper their separation during the short-term shows in Scotland and Ireland.58 William Grimaldi (1751–1830), miniature painter to the Prince of Wales and Duke of York, painted the pair in early 1804. Hannah Linwood was happy with her now lost portrait, describing it to Boulton as a “most pleasing & striking likeness.”59 Mary’s image was also a success, for Grimaldi made a duplicate of the portrait for his own collection. In the image, the textile details draw the viewer’s eye (Figure 3.8). Her shoulders are draped with a colorful shawl with a scalloped border, and ribbons decorate her hair. Circles around Linwood’s large brown eyes, which became more prominent as she aged, are seen along with a slight smile. The attractive miniatures of Mary and her mother were exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1804, providing the embroiderer with additional publicity for the ongoing Edinburgh show.60 During Linwood’s traveling exhibitions, she experimented with business and display practices that she later employed in the Leicester Square gallery. She placed her most popular replicas, such as the Stubbs and Gainsborough pictures, in separate rooms, a strategy that foreshadowed her dramatic installation technique.61 In Edinburgh,

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Figure 3.8  Mary Linwood, c. 1804, William Grimaldi, Leicester Museums and Galleries.

Linwood’s textiles were seen for the first time by gaslight, a practice that extended her hours of operation, thus earning her a good deal of money. She enthusiastically wrote to Boulton about her very flattering reception at Edinburgh, where my works still are, and attract the Notice of numbers, I assure you great as were my hopes and expectations, the  Hospitality of the Scotch exceeded them, by every possible and marked attention both public and private, nor would my English friends be out-shone in these points. The Earl of Moira and his sister Lady Charlotte Rawdon were amongst the most conspicuous of my friends.62

Linwood closed her letter to her mentor with a promotional request. She wrote, “if yourself or acquaintance should be writing to Scotland, I will thank you to name my Works being at Edinburgh.”63 Linwood’s friendships with high-ranking aristocrats certainly contributed to the success of her traveling exhibitions. As her letter to Boulton attests, her friendship with the socially prominent Rawdon siblings boosted the popularity of the Edinburgh show.64 The Anglo-Irish Earl of Moira (Francis Rawdon-Hastings) (1754–1826) was the hero of several military victories in the American Revolutionary War. He also held a prominent position in Scotland as the British Army’s Commander-inChief there.65 Linwood was close to the Earl and his countess, Flora Mure-Campbell (1780–1840), Marchioness of Hastings and 6th Countess of Loudoun, and his sister, Lady Charlotte Rawdon (1769–c. 1835), travelling with them after Hannah Linwood’s

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death in late 1804.66 Beyond companionship, her friendship with them served several purposes: it was clear demonstration of her patriotism and attracted other prominent visitors to her show. Linwood’s reception in Scotland was also encouraged by David Steuart Erskine (1742–1829), the 11th Earl of Buchan and the founder of the Scottish Society of Antiquaries. The organization, established in 1780, was dedicated to the history and archaeology of Scotland and the Scots, a mission that pleased the historically minded Linwood. Shortly after the Earl and his wife visited the Edinburgh exhibition, the embroiderer wrote to him, asking if he was happy with her alteration to a picture that they owned; a possible and rare instance of a Linwood replica in a private collection.67 The Scottish couple replied with their compliments on the show and approval of the modification. Linwood responded: “I receiv’d with pleasure your approbation of my late performance, and wish I could submit to your inspection some works I have now under hand.” She continued, flattering them that she wanted “some excuse to visit Scotland, but the great distance precludes an idea of my seeing often those I have been taught to respect and esteem by their repeated kindness to myself, and their own internal merit, in which numbers I must forever consider Lord and Lady Buchan.”68 Although Linwood was able to spend a few days in Scotland during the opening of her Edinburgh show, her mother’s final illness and death restricted her daughter’s travel. In Linwood’s absence, Burton oversaw the well-attended show, which closed thirteen months after it had opened.69 Erskine’s correspondence also sheds light on Linwood’s working process and plans for a show in a second Scottish city. The aristocrat jotted a note on one of the letters describing Linwood at work: “it was erroneously assumed that Miss Linwood was assisted in drawing her pictures by a professional artist but she shewed her powers in contours by giving her aid to correct the drawings of other artists in my presence.”70 While Erskine’s support provided Linwood with local social and professional cachet, his eyewitness account emphasized her artistic knowledge and skill at drawing. In April of 1805, Linwood wrote to Erskine about her plans for an exhibition in Glasgow, stating, “I have consented [to do so] for a few weeks” after receiving “repeated invitations to have my collection placed there.”71 In this city, Anna May Chichester (1777–1849), the Anglo-Irish Marchioness of Donegal, had planned to loan the embroiderer several rooms for her exhibition. The show and another planned in Belfast never came to fruition, perhaps because of financial obligations stemming from Hannah Linwood’s death in December of 1804. Nonetheless, Linwood’s alliances with Chichester, Erskine, and the Rawdon siblings were part of an ongoing social strategy that had begun in the late 1790s as she built her collection. Between 1804 and 1807, Linwood conducted a very modern and dynamic juggling act: she oversaw her school and extended family members in Leicester while organizing the shows in Edinburgh, Dublin, and Cork.72 The Edinburgh and Dublin exhibitions were open for at least a year, enabling her to set aside money for the permanent venue in London. Instead of emphasizing her British subject matter, Linwood’s advertisements for the traveling shows stressed the addition of the latest replicas to her collection, reminding her Irish and Scottish visitors of the new works that they were about to

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see. This was a diplomatic move in the Irish cities, which had recently and somewhat contentiously become part of the British nation in 1801.73 Her success in Ireland was also undoubtedly assisted by her contributions to local charities and the concerts that she held in the two cities.74 Linwood, confident in her professional endeavors, wisely increased her ticket price during the traveling exhibitions. Her earnings brought her financial security at a time of burgeoning fiscal and familial responsibilities, for she received a bequest from her mother of £250, which paid for less than a year’s worth of the loan payments that she also inherited.75 Despite these obligations, the ticket revenue allowed her to care for dependent family members, decrease the debt to Boulton, and hold onto the Priory, the site of her Leicester home and school.76 From time to time, she was also able to purchase art that inspired more replicas, thus supplying the novelty that Boulton regularly suggested in his letters. As I have argued in this chapter, the show’s proceeds also paid for several portrait commissions that tacitly promoted Linwood’s artistic interests. These images, some of which were produced in an atmosphere of artistic  interchange and friendship, indicate her rising professional status. The portraits repeat similar imagery, reflecting Linwood’s involvement in their creation and the importance of homogeneity to her promotional efforts, such as the articles in this chapter. Image and word thus complimented her savvy use of advertising, exhibition guides, and royal patronage discussed in the preceding chapter. Finally, Linwood’s strategic relationships with well-born friends and patrons attracted visitors to her venues and the Leicester boarding school.77 This practice continued well into the nineteenth century, as I demonstrate in the following chapter.

4

The Leicester Square Gallery: Performing British Patriotism

In the early nineteenth century, Linwood continued to conduct her exceptional balancing act between Leicester and London, where her professional success was evident in multiple ways. In her hometown, her needlework practice and family boarding school had expanded her network of social contacts. Connoisseurs who became friends lent her paintings to replicate in textile, knowing that this generosity would enhance their own reputations and those of their collections. In turn, Linwood used her newfound social and artistic connections to help family, friends, and former students pursue artistic or literary careers. The ticket sales from the Hanover Square gallery and the traveling shows in Scotland and Ireland made it possible for her to rent and renovate a large space in Leicester Square. Linwood had the wealth to acquire numerous prints, drawings, and paintings from British artists that inspired the replicas after Gainsborough, Morland, Stubbs, Westall, and Thomas Barker of Bath.1 Lastly, she finally realized the goal of a permanent venue, the Leicester Square Gallery, in one of London’s most popular neighborhoods. The preceding chapters outline the importance of British culture (both visual and written) in Linwood’s exhibitions and self-fashioning through portraiture and publications. Although she had begun to experiment with installation design at the Hanover Square exhibition, the spacious Leicester Square site allowed her to highlight inventiveness and resourcefulness in the arrangement and display of these uniquely sculpted spaces. Here, the individual rooms were fully developed as examples of cultural patriotism, Linwood’s celebration of contemporary British painters, especially those who specialized in landscape painting. Her installations expressed still-evolving facets of early nineteenth-century British identity. For example, the Cottage, Grove, and Ruins featured romantic images of the rural life that was disappearing in the wake of industrialization. The Dens highlighted England’s imperial expansion, while the Gothic Room underlined examples of leaders who transgressed societal norms (presumably unlike then-contemporary British leaders). The last room in the gallery, the Scripture Room, represented the final step in Linwood’s salute to contemporary British painters, for it invited her visitors to compare and equate the preceding and mostly British imagery with replicas of well-known Italian Renaissance and Baroque paintings.

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The Leicester Square Gallery: Acquisition and Renovation The gallery’s renovation and opening coincided with a key period in the formation of British identity as it has been described by Linda Colley. Unlike many of the groups whom Colley discusses, Linwood did not use her artistic patriotism as a means of participating in political life. Instead, Linwood’s national pride encompassed an artistic and social strategy of cultural patriotism. Replicas of British art were prevalent throughout her gallery, contributing to its long-term popularity and likely tempering the transgressive act of publicly exhibiting her art. They complemented the Anglocentric focus of other parts of her life. These include her acquisition of books, prints, and paintings, as well as her travel, which with one exception (the Paris trip of late 1802) remained firmly focused on the British Isles. The first decade of the nineteenth century was a time of great autonomy for Linwood, as demonstrated by her quick trip to Paris in 1802–3 and the subsequent exhibitions in Scotland and Ireland between 1804 and 1807. Despite the steady income from the permanent gallery, Linwood never traveled to the Continent again, another indication of her allegiance to British culture. Planning for the next gallery space in London began soon after she returned from Europe, when she wrote to her friend and mentor Boulton about her requirements for the London space in early 1803. She wanted at least four rooms for her gallery and nine for her living area: a drawing room, dining room, two kitchens, and five bedrooms for herself, guests, and servants.2 According to Boulton’s calculations, such a space in central London would cost her at least £1500, £1000 for an initial lease and at least £500 for renovation. On top of that, she should expect to pay at least £250 per year for rent.3 Although Boulton helped her to budget for this space, both he and her mother were in declining health during this decade and were unable to advise her as they had in the past. In early 1806, Linwood found a space that she wanted at Nos. 5–6 Leicester Square, also known as Savile House, a building with an aristocratic provenance. Named for the family who lived in it for much of the eighteenth century, Savile House had also been home to the future George III and Duke of York in the early 1760s, which suggests that Queen Charlotte may have pointed Linwood to the building as she had with the Pantheon and Hanover Square venues. In the early nineteenth century, the large houses on this street were rented by wine merchants, silversmiths, and linen drapers, all purveyors of luxury who replaced the mostly aristocratic residents who had lived there in the eighteenth century.4 Linwood was likely also attracted to this area because of familial connections to the luxury and textile industries, as well as its reputation as center of entertainment. She chose an opportune time to open a permanent venue in London, for the growing city’s population was just under 1 million inhabitants, which ensured a steady stream of new visitors. On June 23, 1806, Linwood signed a forty-nine-year lease on the large building from its owner Thomas Willows with co-leasees and brothers John and Herbert Broom. This was the longest possible term of a lease of rental under English common law, which signaled their plans for an extended occupancy. As a single woman, Linwood could have leased a building in her own name, but she thought (ultimately incorrectly) that it would be safer to co-lease with people whom she knew through her connections to

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the textile industry and her family’s origins in Birmingham. Like the Linwood family, Thomas Willow and John and Herbert Broom made their livelihood through the sale of luxury material goods. In London they sold Kidderminster carpets that were produced in the western Midlands, close to Linwood’s birthplace.5 All four tenants wanted to make extensive changes to both the building’s exterior and interior, which the drawn-out contract allowed them to do. The men needed showrooms and more building entrances for their carpet warehouse, while Linwood wanted a sequence of adjacent rooms that she could alter for the display of her most popular replicas. Linwood and her partners were eager to begin renovations on Savile House, which began four days after the lease was signed. They hired architect and builder Samuel Page (1771–1852) to repair the roof and create a Neoclassical facade that was in line with other buildings in the neighborhood (Figure  4.1).6 The large staircase, which dwarfed the others on the street, beckoned curious onlookers, as did the wide-headed bays and big shop windows. Page’s alterations to the exterior appear to have been mostly cosmetic, while the interior ones were structural and changed the layout of the space. The work soon attracted public notice, for in February of 1807 Farington reported that she had paid £1000 for the changes and would be paying an annual rent of £250, figures which were close to Boulton’s earlier estimate.7 Linwood rented more space in Savile House than she needed for her gallery, with plans to sublet some to help defray the cost of the renovations. These renovations ultimately went way over budget, something that Boulton had warned her against in early 1803.8 While Linwood met her financial obligations to Page, the three men defaulted on them, leading to a prolonged lawsuit which was not settled until 1837.9 Linwood’s other monetary commitments

Figure 4.1  Distant View of Leicester Square, c. 1750, unknown artist, Westminster Archives.

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included quarterly land taxes of approximately £12 and weekly advertisements in the Morning Post that cost 3 shillings.10 Despite the aforementioned financial and legal concerns and responsibilities, Page’s changes to Savile House transformed it into the exhibition space that Linwood envisioned, with its combination of traditional and innovative display practices (Figure  4.2). The facade’s division into two rather than three stories added to the spaciousness of the first room (the main gallery) with its sixteen-foot-tall ceilings.11 Various design features indicate that Linwood clearly wanted this chamber to evoke a picture gallery in a stately home, like the long galleries or main corridors of Harlaxton Manor in Grantham or Syon House in Brentford, which are likewise adorned with paintings, fireplaces, and ornate windows. Linwood’s main gallery also resembles several corridors at Polesden Lacey, a residence in Surrey bought by poet and playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816) in 1804, from whom she shortly thereafter borrowed several paintings. Guidebooks described the main room

Figure  4.2  View of Linwood’s Leicester Square Gallery, c. 1840, unknown artist, London Museum.

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of Linwood’s gallery as large and well-proportioned, decorated with scarlet broad cloth, gold bullion tassels, and Greek borders (Color Plate 1).12 The sofas and settees matched the broad cloth and allowed visitors to examine the embroidery in a sociable and leisurely way. In the main gallery, Linwood employed several design features that controlled her visitors’ interaction with the textiles. Each work was placed in a gilded frame meant to recall the painted prototypes on which many of them were based and encourage her visitors to view the pieces as they would a painting rather than a print or a drawing, which could have been displayed on a table or mounted in a book. Guardrails kept her visitors from getting too close to the objects, which added a layer of protection for the somewhat three-dimensional works that, in some cases, invite a tactile response from viewers even today. Linwood also ensured that her embroidery would be protected from light damage. The high ceilings in the main gallery brought in a lot of sunlight, especially in the early morning hours before the Leicester Square gallery opened. To combat this, she installed a green silk curtain between each textile and its frame. Each evening, the curtain was drawn on the embroideries to reduce their exposure to natural light.13 While the additional layer of fabric was necessary, the practice harkened back to the Renaissance practice of covering altarpieces and other prominent paintings, especially during the Lenten season.14 The covering of Linwood’s textiles also recalls the many theaters and popular attractions in her immediate neighborhood. The gradual unveiling in these venues enhanced the experience of visiting them, not unlike the sensation of entering Linwood’s various installations. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, art galleries and studios, natural history museums, theaters, and other types of entertainment existed side by side in London’s Leicester Square.15 Hogarth and Reynolds had their studios in Leicester Fields, within walking distance of Savile House.16 In the 1780s, the neighborhood was home to Philip James de Loutherbourg (1740–1812)’s interactive Eidophusikon, which united the display of paintings with sounds, transparencies, light, colored glass, and smoke. Robert Barker’s spectacular panoramic paintings were also exhibited nearby, where they beckoned visitors with their dramatic lighting and unusual viewpoints.17 Across the street, the teaching museum of Scottish surgeon John Hunter (1728–93) in Leicester House allowed visitors to examine the skeletons of humans as well as over three thousand other creatures.18 Linwood’s gallery mirrored the eclecticism of its neighborhood; its first room featured a more traditional display while the Gothic Room, Cottage, Grove, Ruins, and Dens offered an array of sensory experiences like de Loutherbourg and Barker’s late eighteenth-century venues.19 Yet these experiences were not diametric to early nineteenth-century spectators, who often visited a variety of entertainments within the same short visit. For example, tourists William Godwin and Robert Southey (British Poet Laureate from 1813 to 1843) took in Linwood’s gallery, the Royal Academy, panoramas, and the beasts in the Tower of London over the course of a couple of days, as did Indian naval architects Jehangeer Nowrojee (d. 1845) and Hirjeebhoy Merwanjee (d. 1855).20 This fluidity is confirmed by contemporary guidebooks and advertisements that often listed the various types of entertainment together. Early nineteenth-century editions of Richard Phillips’s Picture of London placed Linwood’s

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Gallery, the Royal Academy, the British Institution, and Barker’s Panorama under the same general heading of public exhibition.21 Similarly, an early advertisement for the Leicester Square gallery is sandwiched between one for the Royal Academy and one for Barker’s Panorama.22 In his examination of the exhibition culture of nineteenth-century London, Andrew Hemingway cautions that modern conceptions of high and low art, ideological content, and reception should not be confused with those from 200 years ago. While Constable’s quiet landscapes are revered today, in the early nineteenth century, they were overshadowed by Belshazzar’s Feast (1821) by John Martin and The Chelsea Pensioners Reading the Waterloo Dispatch (1822) by David Wilkie, whose theatricality is in line with the drama of Linwood’s installations like the Ruins and the Cottage.23 Martin and Wilkie’s extraordinary popularity and the exhibition practices of de Loutherbourg, Géricault, and Linwood indicate that the division between cerebral high and popular low art was more of a cultural ideal than a reality.24 According to Hemingway, in this “startingly urban environment, art exhibitions, whatever the ambitions of some artists to distance art from trade, were seen almost inevitably as one of a species of entertainments—as shows.”25 This similitude was reinforced by the admission fee charged by a majority of these venues: one shilling, the same amount as a ticket to the Royal Academy or a cheap seat at Drury Lane or Covent Garden. Linwood charged one shilling until the first decade of the nineteenth century, when she paid for the expensive renovation of the Leicester Square gallery. The economic revenue and attendance figures at early nineteenth-century visual attractions in London confirm this catholic approach to entertainment. Linwood’s gallery was one of many public amusements in London, but it was unique in its variety, longevity, and emphasis on modern British artists and, most importantly, the fact that it was conceived of and run by a woman. Its multiple rooms satisfied a plurality of tastes, which likely contributed to its extended success. The more adventuresome (and perhaps youthful) visitors might have been attracted to her innovative installations, while more traditional (and perhaps older) viewers likely gravitated to the seated comfort of Linwood’s long gallery or the gravitas of the Scripture Room and its religious paintings. In modern terms, it would have been akin to a visit to Disney World, where adolescents clamor for rides on Space Mountain or the Tower of Terror, while their elders spend time in the patriotic, staid, and animatronic Hall of Presidents. The gallery’s eclecticism, however, may be partially to blame for the lack of its scholarly examination. It is clear from Linwood’s publications and installations that she sought to transform her visitors from passive viewers to patriotic and active spectators, a subjective endeavor that should be seen within the context of the Romantic era from whose accounts she is absent. In her exhibition catalogues, for example, Linwood employed poetry to amplify the dramatic features of her installations and their subject matter. This practice was likely indebted to the short-lived literary galleries of the previous century, but she selected the verses to match the images rather than utilizing words as a springboard for artists, as the Shakespeare and Milton galleries did. Most of these poetic verses were excerpted from Linwood’s vast poetry collection at the Priory, to which her students also had access.26 In the catalogues which reproduced the verses,

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Linwood often chose lines by popular British authors, which was part of the broader celebration of English culture in her gallery. Her celebration of modern British artists was merged with a similar memorialization of canonical writers. The literary aspect of Linwood’s catalogues reflects her training as a teacher, an encyclopedic knowledge of British literature, and the image of learned virtue that she had crafted for herself. In the following sections, her replicas after Gainsborough, Barker, Westall, and Morland will be considered in tandem with their catalogue entries to yield a more comprehensive understanding of her goals for the Leicester Square gallery. Linwood’s focus on the work of English authors and modern British artists was particularly appealing in the opening years of the Leicester Square gallery, which overlapped with the Napoleonic era. Her replicas of contemporary British artists like Reynolds, Stubbs, Gainsborough, and Morland, and Renaissance and Baroque painters like Raphael, Rubens, and Dolci, allowed her viewers to examine and experience the textiles comparatively, perhaps equivocating the new and the old, the contemporary British school of painters and the Continental masters. Her copies offered a revision to the art historical canon, suggesting that a British school of painting had arrived that was comparable to the Old Masters. Linwood’s spotlight on British art, an expression of her own cultural patriotism, was in stark contrast to the continued prominence of Continental art in London’s most prestigious artistic sites like the Royal Academy, the British Institution, and, after 1824, the National Gallery of Art. Furthermore, the Leicester Square Gallery represented a logical step in the veneration of British art that had been part of her career since her London debut in 1787. In particular, her installations there allowed her to engage her  visitors’ emotions and patriotic fervor in an innovative fashion. In the pastoral ones, Londoners could envision an idyllic English countryside that contrasted with the more sublime scenes in the Gothic Room, Dens, and Ruins. Linwood’s acquisition and use of prints made in Britain as the basis of her replicas was yet another expression of her cultural patriotism. By doing this, she aided an artistic industry at which the British excelled, perhaps more so than any other European country during this period. This support was especially helpful between 1795 and 1810, when embargoes drastically reduced the import/export market for prints and printed objects. The opening of Linwood’s gallery on March 8, 1809, was accompanied by little fanfare, as she was simultaneous occupied by other tasks.27 During the gallery’s first days, she published her own first print (after Gainsborough) and prepared to move from an apartment near the Palace of St. James to new lodgings at the Leicester Square location. Her advertisement for the St. James apartment indicates that Linwood had achieved a certain degree of financial and social success. In the May 1809 Morning Post, it was described as a “a beautifully situated house ready for a genteel family, consisting of five excellent bedrooms, two good parlors, a drawing room, two kitchens and good cellars.”28 Linwood was also in the midst of compiling two publications, the first catalogue for the venue and a biographical guide to it, The Linwood Gallery of Pictures in Needle-work and a Biographical Sketch of the Painters (hereafter Biographical Sketches) (1811). Unlike the catalogue, which she updated every year or two, she produced only one version of the more expensive and lengthier Biographical Sketches, which contained three color illustrations: two of the gallery and one lavishly

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embellished title page (Color Plates 1, 4).29 These images were engraved by C[harles] [Parsons] Knight (1743–1826), quite likely after drawings created by Linwood at the time of the gallery’s opening. They depict the long gallery and the Dens respectively. The Dens featured an installation of Linwood’s textile copies of The Tygress and Lion and Lionesses (1773) by Stubbs and a seascape after Vernet (likely Sea Through a Rock) (c. 1800). Juxtaposing them there underlined her skill at rendering both landscapes and seascapes, whether pacified, in turmoil, or somewhere in between. The Biographical Sketches does not list an author, but its pedagogical tone indicates that Linwood or someone close to her created it. The volume contains entries on artists whose work she copied and historical facts about the replicas’ subject matter, including Lady Jane Grey, Virgil, and Mount Vesuvius.30 Most of these excerpts were copied without attribution from books in Linwood’s library, further confirmation of her role in its production, as is the section on her own designs, which were described as “Originals.”31 The volume’s organization is elusive, however, for it does not correspond with the hang in Linwood’s Leicester Square gallery, nor does it display an alphabetical or chronological order.32 Cultural patriotism, seen both in Linwood’s gallery and exhibition catalogues, is a unifying theme in both the introduction and the individual sections of the Biographical Sketches. The former emphasizes Linwood’s dedication to “modern masters of the English school,” which is seen in the number of their pictures that she has copied. 86.5 percent of her replicas in the Leicester Square Gallery were after paintings by either English or Welsh artists, an indication of her cultural patriotism. The author of the Biographical Sketches (likely Linwood) continues that although “modern biographers have written of some of the modern artists, there are many who have not yet been introduced to the public (my emphasis), whose works form a conspicuous part of this gallery.”33 The phrases expressed Linwood’s mission, the celebration of an emergent canon of British artists. Throughout the publication, Gainsborough is described as the best English landscape painter—even better than Rubens in the rendering of trees, foreground, and figures.34 The English painter is also favorably compared to Claude, Raphael, Teniers, and van Dyck, and he is notably praised for his ability to copy their work. Gainsborough’s importance to her was signaled in other ways large and small: his profile is the longest one in the Biographical Sketches, and the Ruins and the Cottage highlight her replicas of his work, one of which she signed in thread with his name.

The Pastoral on Display: Emulating Gainsborough Linwood’s preference for Gainsborough, whose work she copied six times, aligns with Reynolds’s instruction in his fourteenth discourse, published shortly after the Suffolk painter’s death.35 Although there was a rivalry between the two artists, the penultimate discourse was an endorsement of Gainsborough, whom Reynolds described as “one of the greatest ornaments of our Academy.” In it, Reynolds elevates the genre of landscape painting and announces the burgeoning arrival of an English school of painting, with Gainsborough at its helm. According to Reynolds, Gainsborough’s lack of travel outside of England kept him free from the classicizing tendencies (“ancient

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prejudices”) of late eighteenth-century Continental artists, a compliment that may have been a somewhat backhanded one.36 With Reynolds’s endorsement, landscape painting grew in popularity at the Royal Academy and elsewhere in the last decade of the eighteenth century. Both Gainsborough and Linwood found beauty and inspiration in the English landscape. The painter never left England, and Linwood traveled only once to the Continent. Because she spent most of her life in cities, the idea of the English countryside signified an idyllic respite, the same type of reprieve she hoped to provide the visitors inside her gallery. As I have previously argued, Linwood’s partiality for landscape scenery and its occupants was seen in her artistic and bibliographic collections, as well as in her exhibition history. For example, her first show at the Pantheon highlighted her nascent love of landscape scenes and specifically the landscape paintings of Alexander Cozens (1717–86).37 Between 1798 and 1809, Linwood added a total of twelve replicas after Gainsborough and Morland to her collection, another indication of her partiality for this genre. Her Gainsborough copies were based primarily on firsthand study of the original paintings, while the embroideries after Morland derived from prints, some of which she owned. Her replication of their work demonstrates Linwood’s cultural patriotism, for their images of rural life were thought of as quintessentially English, which was especially appealing amid the Napoleonic struggles.38 Their depictions were increasingly nostalgic, however, as the landscape itself was irrevocably altered by enclosure and industrialization, as Ann Bermingham and John Barrell have argued.39 Linwood’s installations like the Cottage, Grove, and Ruins spaces were designed for smaller groups of visitors and yielded subjective and largely individual responses; yet in their celebration of landscape scenery, they also offered her urban audience a unifying experience. Cottagers, harvesters, and woodsmen at rest were images of the working rural poor, an Other against whom urban middle-class British audiences like Linwood’s could define themselves.40 Gainsborough and Morland presented this way of life as seemingly simple and unchanging, in contrast to bustling city life and political disorder on the Continent. This was a type of painting at which the English could excel, for they were purveyors of “Nature, Simplicity, and Truth,” as opposed to “French frippery and affectation,” according to a 1795 analysis of landscape painting in the Morning Post, a newspaper in which Linwood regularly advertised her exhibitions.41 In the Leicester Square gallery, the walls of the spacious main room were full of framed textiles arranged primarily by size. As visitors left this room and moved into the installations, they encountered more proximate views designed for intimate groups and solitary viewers. To keep the smaller chambers from becoming too crowded, Linwood placed chairs near the exit to the first room. This forced, somatic pause contributed to the delayed enjoyment of the following spaces. In the first installation, the Gothic Room, Linwood prominently displayed her embroidered portrait of Napoleon (Color Plate 11) alongside two other merciless men and their victims depicted by Northcote. The visitors then encountered the first installation devoted to rural imagery, the Cottage, which housed A Boy with a Cat—Morning and Children at the Fire, both after Gainsborough. In the book Leicester Square: Its Association and Its Worthies (1874), Londoner Tom Taylor noted

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the difference between the Gothic Room and the rural installations like the Cottage, Ruins, and Grove: “by way of contrast, you looked in through a cottage window at Gainsborough’s Children [Warming Themselves] at the Fire. A recess showed Westall’s Gleaner and Child and Gainsborough’s Woodman, both sheltering from the storm.”42 Taylor recounts that Linwood’s installations featured both  physical and emotional means of experiencing her installations, for the viewers walked by and through them. Linwood’s former student Mary Kirby was also struck by the realism of the Cottage and its embroidered occupants. She wrote that the installation featured “a group of young people standing round a log fire upon the  hearth and holding up their hands to screen themselves from the blaze, [it was] so life-like, you could almost fancy you saw the lights and shadows flickering on their faces.”43 Linwood wanted to create high-quality copies of Gainsborough’s paintings and replicate their lifelike qualities, features that both Taylor and Kirby commented upon. In the Cottage, she also displayed a textile of her design, A Dog-From Nature, an inclusion that reflects a confidence in her own work. As Taylor and Kirby recounted, the realism of Linwood’s replicas after Gainsborough was enhanced by their placement in rustic settings alongside physical objects depicted in the original artworks. Linwood placed her copies of A Boy with a Cat—Morning and its pendant Children at the Fire in the Cottage, where they were seen alongside props that included a rough-hewn bowl, casement door, and woodpile. The three-dimensional items evoked domesticity, like her textile medium. For Linwood, the objects likely acted as mementos of her firsthand study of playwright Sheridan’s Gainsborough paintings, emphasizing access to this collection and the high quality of her replicas.44 The embroiderer’s use of props was also in emulation of Gainsborough, who used organic matter such as rock, bark, coal, and plants in his studio to inspire and improve his depiction of landscape painting, especially the picturesque Cottage Door series.45 This studio practice was likely inspired by his 1781 and 1782 visits to Loutherbourg’s Eidophusikon in Leicester Square, where he witnessed the creation of natural stage sets whose effects were enhanced using transparencies, light, colored glass, and smoke.46 Like Loutherbourg, Linwood created a stand-alone environment with organic materials and other assorted props, while Gainsborough used them to enhance the verism of individual paintings. Linwood sometimes arranged for a long-term loan of oil paintings to enhance the realistic features of her copies. In 1805, Sheridan loaned her Gainsborough’s Boy with a Cat—Morning and Children at the Fire, on which she based the Cottage replicas. He also lent her a third unspecified Landscape.47 She had all three in her possession until December of 1807. Farington’s home apparently served as a waystation for the loan, and on February 1 and 2, 1805, the diarist reported that Linwood visited him to check on the three Gainsborough paintings, which were then either transferred to a broker named Heath for delivery or directly to Linwood’s London lodgings near St. James Palace.48 The deal involved a payment of £500, a hefty amount for Linwood to pay, especially after assuming responsibility for her mother’s loan to Boulton in late 1803.49 It is unclear whether the fee was for rental or a refundable security deposit, but either one surely helped the cash-strapped Sheridan.50

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The Cottage: Picturing the Pastoral A Boy with a Cat—Morning and Children at the Fire are examples of Gainsborough’s fancy pictures, images that Bermingham evocatively describes as personifications of his rustic landscape paintings.51 The genre often features proximate views of one or two impoverished but attractive children whose vulnerability is enhanced by torn clothing and ripped shoes, as seen in A Boy with a Cat—Morning (Figure 4.3). Such images combined two of her favorite subjects: landscape scenes and sentimental genre painting. Her placement of these textile copies in specialized displays like the Cottage, Grove, and Ruins emphasized the isolation of their subjects. The installations, along with the objects in them, evoked a three-dimensional embodiment of the picturesque, as described by Gilpin, Price, and other contemporary theorists whose publications Linwood owned.52 Gainsborough’s A Boy with a Cat—Morning (1787) features one of his favorite models, Jack Hill, in the guise of a rural child against the backdrop of a tree. Perhaps lost, he is paused in thought and scratches his head. His robust health (and that of

Figure  4.3  A Boy with a Cat—Morning, 1787, Thomas Gainsborough, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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the cat), clean shift, and red cloak contrast with the rag-like shoes that he wears. The painting depicts an idealized image of the countryside, but the ominous darkness in the background and the child’s obvious confusion belie a feeling of tranquility. Linwood replaced Hill with a delicately featured girl who takes up more of the composition; thus, the title of her replica became Girl and Cat (Color Plate 14).53 In Linwood’s version, the cat is both closer to the child and less ferocious than in the painting. In short,  the replica presents a more untroubled picturesque vision than its prototype, and this sensation would have been amplified by its installation in the Cottage. While Girl and Cat is fairly like its prototype, a significant divergence is the twopart embroidered inscription on the textile, tangible evidence of Linwood’s celebration of the Suffolk painter. The textile is inscribed with the date of 1809 and is signed “T. Gainsborough.” Only one-third of her replicas bear her own embroidered signature; Gainsborough likewise did not sign A Boy with a Cat—Morning.54 The embroidered text on Girl and Cat marks the only time that Linwood signed a replica in this way, material evidence of Gainsborough’s importance to her. Despite a considerable amount of light damage to Girl and Cat, the textile still displays several vibrant areas of color. A few smaller areas of blue peek out near the right side of the embroidered frame. Similarly, a considerable amount of red thread survives. This hue was made from cochineal (insect) dye, which bonded well with animal fibers like the wool with which Linwood worked. Unlike the indigo, cochineal dye required a mordant (binding agent), making it a labor-intensive commodity in early nineteenth-century England. It has held its color well here, yielding red that did not easily fade, as seen on the child’s cheeks, lips, and cloak, which had a brightening effect.55 Linwood also employed a variety of stitches in the textile. She used longer ones to form the foliage and the embroidered frame, while layers of shorter ones are seen on the child and cat, creating a more sculptural profile. An anonymous reviewer in the 1822 Literary Chronicle singled out the raised appearance of the figure, stating that “had it been possible, we should have suspected the face to have been touched by the brush.”56 Linwood’s blanketing technique created a sense of dimensionality, activating the surface of Girl with Cat, amplifying the affinity between it and its prototype. Although Children at the Fire (Linwood’s embroidered pendant to Girl and Cat) no longer exists, material traces of it remain. In addition to making a full-size copy of it, the long-term loan from Sheridan’s collection allowed her to commission a mezzotint from Charles Turner. She then published the print shortly after the Leicester Square gallery opened its doors (Figure 4.4).57 This project surely deepened her understanding of Gainsborough’s style, particularly his use of line and shading. Her inventory contained multiple mezzotint proof and final prints of it, indicating its importance to her. She seemingly sold impressions of the print at her Gallery, providing her visitors with a memento of their visit and a greater understanding of the various types of replication. She also owned multiple prints of its pendant, A Boy with a Cat—Morning (publisher unknown), suggesting they too may have been a souvenir and played a role in the replication process.58 Linwood’s active role in the circulation and acquisition of these prints, coupled with the unique signature on Girl and Cat, signals the value of this textile pair to her.

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Figure 4.4  Children at the Fire, 1809, published by Linwood after Gainsborough, British Museum.

In her catalogue entries for Girl and Cat and Children at the Fire, Linwood included sentimental poetry by beloved British authors, another example of her cultural patriotism. The lines amplified the picturesque qualities of her replicas and their rustic environment. A Boy with a Cat—Morning was accompanied by lines from Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale: The self-same sun that shines upon a court, Hides not his visage from the cottage, but looks on all alike.59

The excerpt is from the pastoral act of the play, in which the socially unequal Florizel and Perdita appear as shepherd and shepherdess.60 The verses speak of the equal rank of rich and poor in the eyes of nature, thus celebrating the virtue of the lowly born, like the children in Linwood’s replicas. Children at the Fire was paired with a stanza from Charles Cotton’s poem To a Child of Five Years Old,

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In this poem, Cotton (1630–87), an author known for his celebration of rural life, equates the innocence of youth with various types of flowers found in the English countryside. Yet neither the verses nor the replicas refer to the indigence and hardship this population experienced. Linwood rightly assumed that many of her urban visitors would prefer to see an idyllic scene of pastoral life. By romanticizing the countryside in word and image, Linwood was also following Gainsborough’s practice. Barrell, in particular, has discussed the artist’s naturalization of the extreme poverty of the rural poor, readily seen in his transformation of their attractive scruffiness into an aesthetic.62 In the Gainsborough paintings that Linwood replicated, depictions of clean, well-fed children are juxtaposed with darkening skies, torn clothing and shoes, and broken cottage windows. These divergent features are likewise seen in Gainsborough’s Cottage Children with an Ass and A Shepherd (Shepherd’s Boy in a Storm), images that Linwood also copied. She too celebrated a pastoral ideal before a mostly urban audience, knowing that the sentimental appeal of Gainsborough, and later Morland, would bring more people into her gallery for a break from what eighteenth-century theorist Uvedale Price described as the “guilt and fever of city life.”63 Linwood’s veneration of British art and this subject matter was further amplified by tailored installations and the incorporation of pastoral, often Georgic poetry, in her catalogue entries for the replicas.

Linwood’s Woodmen and Women: Emulating Gainsborough, Barker, and Westall In addition to cottage children, images of woodmen and gleaners were also popular figures in eighteenth-century British art and literature as symbols of a disappearing and presumed simple lifestyle. Within actual rural society, woodmen and gleaners were marginal figures, collecting the remnants of nature and man, the dregs of wood and grain residue no one else could use. In the Leicester Square Gallery, however, Linwood’s two copies of the woodman subject (one by Gainsborough, one by Barker) and a Gleaner after Westall were some of her most admired images. Gainsborough’s Woodman is characterized by a tension between idyll and menace, much like his Boy and Cat and Children at the Fire. In the image (now only known in print form), the woodman looks up toward unpredictable skies, seeking shelter from the oncoming storm (Figure 4.5). The contorted placement of the dog, who anxiously follows his master’s gaze, contributes to the disquiet of the image. He leans against a bundle of branches that he has gathered, while a cottage (his?) is nestled in the background. Gainsborough’s depiction of the woodman as a pastoral pilgrim was likely indebted to his 1787 purchase of St. John the Baptist in the Wilderness, a painting then attributed to Bartholomé Murillo.64 He began the Woodman in the summer of 1787,

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Figure 4.5  Woodman in a Storm, 1790, Peter Simon after Gainsborough, British Museum.

modeling it on “a poor smith worn out by labour, and now a pensioner upon accidental charity,” a description which suggests the artist’s frustration with the changing rural landscape. Gainsborough considered it his masterpiece, for he wrote to Reynolds on his deathbed, asking him to see “my woodman that you never saw,” a request that the latter fulfilled.65 Although this was Gainsborough’s largest image of a woodman, smaller images of them had been a feature of his paintings since the mid-century. His return to this theme and the magnification of it (as in the final large-scale Woodman) intimate Gainsborough’s belief that a school of British painting should concentrate on contemporary subjects, an idea that Linwood shared.66 For many Britons, the woodman symbolized a simpler and rapidly disappearing way of life. The contemporary popularity of Gainsborough’s Woodman is reflected by its copies: two by Barker of Bath and one by Linwood. The relationship between the images of the woodmen produced by the three artists indicates that excellent replicas often affected their viewers in powerful and longstanding ways. Hoping to profit from the veneration of Gainsborough’s Woodman, Barker copied it twice, in 1789 (Tate) and 1792.67 Although very similar to Gainsborough’s original, Barker’s replicas are more lighthearted; his subjects do not appear to be cowed by the weather or the landscape.

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Gallery owner Thomas Macklin purchased Barker’s second version for a hefty 500 guineas.68 As a print seller, Macklin viewed high-quality copies in a positive light, as did many of his mostly middle-class patrons. He placed the painting in his Poets’ Gallery in 1792, where Linwood saw it and created her (now lost) textile version after Barker’s copy. She also copied the poetry from Macklin’s catalogue entry for the painting, an excerpt from “The Task” (1785) by William Cowper that describes the woodman’s day:69 Forth goes the woodman, leaving unconcern’d the cheerful haunts of man: to wield the axe, And drive the edge in yonder forest drear, from morn to eve his solitary task.70

These lines, coupled with Linwood’s large, embroidered replica of Barker’s Woodman in the main gallery, contrasted with her more ominous depiction of Gainsborough’s Woodman in the Ruins.71 The success of these replicas and Barker’s own copies suggest that popular subject matter was more important than originality for audiences who saw rural figures as a symbol of the English past. Linwood’s large-scale copy of Gainsborough’s Woodman played an important role in the afterlife of the painting, which was destroyed in an 1810 fire at Exton Hall (Color Plate 10). After the fire, her Leicester Square gallery was the only place where one could experience the scale, color, and other significant formal elements that had been faithfully replicated by Linwood’s extended study of the Gainsborough. Measuring 96 by 67 inches, her replica of the Woodman is the only full-size copy of Gainsborough’s painting, though several smaller versions exist in print. Housed in the Ruins, Linwood’s visitors encountered it as they exited the Cottage where they had just seen her copies of A Boy with a Cat—Morning and Children at the Fire. As she had done with the Sheridan paintings, Linwood relied on a prolonged loan of the original painting to create her replica of the Woodman. The painting’s owner, Henry Noel, the Earl of Gainsborough (no relation to the painter), loaned it to her sometime between 1795 and 1798, the year that he died.72 She had formed a friendship with Noel in 1792, after he visited her in Leicester to see the Tygress and Salvator Mundi. The loan seems to have also included a pair of Gainsborough paintings, Cottage Children with an Ass and A Shepherd (Shepherd’s Boy in a Storm), which Linwood also copied.73 Between 1799 and 1800, she made two embroideries based on The Woodman, a full-sized textile and a second, bust-length one.74 At Hanover Square, the smaller one acted as a preview for the large Woodman, which was seen in a second room.75 There, it was exhibited alongside Hoppner’s oil portrait of Linwood, a juxtaposition that intimates Gainsborough’s importance to her. Linwood used her blanketing technique to emphasize certain parts of the Woodman, as she had with the other Gainsborough replicas. Multiple layers of thread created the raised figure of the woodman, which is set against a lighter, flatter background. The technique is also seen in the arching of tree branches that hang over his head. As with Linwood’s replica of Boy with a Cat—Morning, liberal amounts of blue and red woolen thread survive in the textile, especially in comparison to the faded browns. She enlivened the faces of the woodman and dog through a selective use of luminous

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silk thread in their pupils. While most of Linwood’s replica stayed true to the original painting, she created a more distant view of the monumental figure, an adjustment that increased his isolation in the Ruins. Although little is known about the spatial construction of the Ruins, they intensified the feeling of dismal exposure communicated in Linwood’s version of the Woodman. According to a contemporary visitor, it was placed in “a sort of grotesque cottage, surrounded with fir-trees; and the little light introduced, is through what appear like casements, made of canvas that cast a gloomy light on the rustic seats and other accompaniments, which in this place have a very happy and picturesque effect.”76 Tom Taylor described the Ruins as sheltering the replica, suggesting that they were tall. Their design was likely influenced by Gilpin’s publications on the picturesque, several of which Linwood owned.77 According to him, picturesque beauty is created by the transformation of a smooth building to an irregularly shaped ruin, which is the “greatest ornament of landscape.”78 The installation of the Woodman in the Ruins increased its pathos, for it suggested that the destruction of a manmade structure (a building) had either been accompanied or caused by nature’s forces. The bodily experience of walking through the various rooms in Linwood’s gallery and arriving in the Ruins with the Woodman was like wandering through the forest punctuated by small shelters that offered a brief respite. Linwood’s catalogue entry for the Woodman included a poetic excerpt from James Thomson’s Seasons (1726–30), two copies of which she owned.79 The poem was connected to national identity in several ways. Thomson viewed British identity as connected to its fertile countryside, which supplied many of the raw materials for the nation’s expansion. The poet equated Britain’s imperial success with that of ancient Rome. As ancient Rome was the steward of the Mediterranean, self-sufficient Britain, independent of the Continent, should oversee the Atlantic Ocean.80 The epic poem, which Barrell has categorized as English Georgic, celebrates the rewards of the rural countryside to its industrious occupants, much like its Virgilian prototype. Thomson’s poem also stressed that nature could be the primary subject of poetry, not surprisingly inspiring paintings by Gainsborough and Reynolds of milkmaids and cottagers.81 Thomson’s lines, read in conjunction with a journey through Linwood’s Ruins, conjured the sublime effects of nature experienced by the Woodman sheltering in his “grotesque cottage” in the Leicester Square gallery: Down comes a deluge of sonorous hail; Or prone descending rain. Wide rent the clouds pour a whole flood; and yet, its flame was quenched, th’unconquerable lightning struggles through Ragged and fierce, or in red whirling balls, and fires the mountains with redoubled rage! Black from the blasting the smold’ring pine stands a sad shatter’d trunk. The gloomy woods start at the flash, and at their deep recess, wide flaming out, their trembling inmates shake.82

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The lines evoke elements of the sublime, for the Woodman is helpless in the face of a storm that appears to have come out of nowhere, a phenomenon not unknown in the English countryside. The capriciousness of nature was a recurrent theme in Linwood’s installations. Some of her visitors would have recognized a parallel between the potential chaos of Mother Nature and the changing face of British landscape, whose enclosure deprived woodmen, gleaners, and cottagers of their subsistence farming, meaning common farming rights. Linwood’s two replicas after Westall, created while he painted her portrait, focused on these vulnerable rural figures. Between the Cottage and the Ruins galleries, the Grove featured a replica of Westall’s Woman and Child (Harvesters) Sheltering from a Storm. Like her nearby copies of Gainsborough’s Woodman and Shepherd’s Boy, its subjects were at the whim of Mother Nature.83 In the main gallery, Linwood hung another Westall replica, The Gleaner’s Child, an image that inspired a lengthy poem written by her friend, Leicester native Susannah Watts (1768–1842). Watts’s life paralleled Linwood’s in several ways. She too was left fatherless at a young age and turned to teaching, writing, and translation to support herself and her mother.84 Like Linwood, Watts won medals for the needle work she exhibited at the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce. She was active in the abolitionist movement in Leicester, penning Poems on the Abolition of the Slave Trade (1809), a publication that Linwood later purchased.85 By the time that the Leicester Square gallery opened, Linwood was financially successful enough to foster the work of younger local authors and artists like Watts, Lucy Aikins (1781–1864), and Linwood’s namesake niece (1783–c. 1860). The younger Linwood, the author of Leicestershire Tales and the composer of several oratorios, is often confused with her aunt.86 Nevertheless, each of these protégés shared her practice of cultural patriotism and her love of rural scenery. Watts wrote An Autumnal Scene: Written Upon Viewing Miss Linwood’s Picture of the Gleaner after seeing both Westall replicas in the Leicester Square Gallery. Linwood wisely reprinted the protracted poem in its entirety in the Biographical Sketches and included its final twenty lines in her catalogue entries for the replicas.87 Although neither of Linwood’s copies after Westall survives, Watts’s ekphrastic lines invoke the subjects of the lost textiles through an imaginary journey taken by the poet Thomson, one of Linwood’s favorite authors. The bard “tunes his Doric reed” and journeys through forest haunts and woody glades, pausing briefly under oak trees, which Watts patriotically describes as “proud guardian of Britannia’s vale.”88 Exiting the forest, Thomson encounters the verdant British countryside, decorated with modest cottages, a little church, and reapers and gleaners hard at work. For Watts, conjuring the spirit of Thomson, the Georgic ideal is the backbone of the nation’s domestic and international prosperity. Yet an impending storm threatens the idyllic scenes, for “its fury centres on the busy plain.”89 In the poem, the older harvesters and gleaners wisely seek cover from it, while desperation and greed keep the younger ones in the field, except for the gleaner’s young child. In a print of the Westall painting, a small group of the more seasoned workers hide under an oak tree, clutching each other. The gleaner’s small child, a symbol of British wisdom, virtue, and modesty, is the focus of the second half of Watts’s poem. Her verse, some of which Linwood included in the catalogue, recalls the imagery in a print of Westall’s painting, the likely model for

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Linwood’s replica. A petite girl shelters from the oncoming storm beneath several oak trees, the protectors of the British countryside. The daughter of a rural sage, she rests on a bed of wheat while clasping “her grainy prize.”90 As a productive rural dweller, she is protected by the intervention of God, who presumably extends the same protection to the British nation, who are morally superior to their rivals across the Channel, especially the French. Watts’s extensive poem, one of several written about Linwood by her Leicester friends, accomplished several things. Published in London and Leicester, it provided the embroiderer with both national and regional publicity. The words describing Thomson’s imagined journey echoed Linwood’s elevation of the poet and the British countryside in her London gallery. The poem’s juxtaposition of the picturesque (the countryside) with the sublime (the impending storm) paralleled Linwood’s use of the manmade Ruins, Grove, and Cottage, in which their occupants sheltered from inclement weather. Visitors to the Leicester Square Gallery could read the verse as they walked through Linwood’s installations, tracing the footsteps of the figures in them and the rural folk in Watts’s poem, which describes two textiles that no longer exist. The Biographical Sketches contain a second poem in praise of Linwood written by Watts’s friend Lucy Aikin, who was encouraged to write by her father, Leicestershire author John Aikin (1747–1822). Her earliest publications include her Epistles on Women, Exemplifying Their Character and Condition in Various Ages and Nations with Miscellaneous Poems (1810) and her poem on Linwood, which was first seen in the Biographical Sketches. Its eighth stanza emphasizes the dynamism of her textiles and the longevity of her dye, especially demonstrated by her surviving replicas after Gainsborough: Then Linwood rose, inspir’d at once to give the matchless grace that bids the pictures live; With the bold air, the lovely, lasting dye, that fills at once and charms the wond’ring eye.91

Watts and Aikin’s poems, published as Linwood opened the Leicester Square Gallery, reflect the emotive power of her high-quality images, even though they were merely copies. By the time that Linwood opened this venue, she was well-positioned to foster the work of younger authors and artists.92

Highlighting the Rustic Past: Gainsborough Replicas in the Main Gallery In Linwood’s first room of the Leicester Square Gallery, her copy of the Gleaner’s Child hung alongside similar subject matter, including the replicas of Gainsborough’s Shepherd’s Boy in a Storm and Cottage Children with an Ass.93 In Shepherd’s Boy in a Storm (now known through Richard Earlom’s 1781 mezzotint), a vulnerable boy looks toward the darkening sky (Figure 4.6).94 In Linwood’s replica, vibrant reds, blues, and greens offset the ominous skyscape, while the eyes of the boy and his dog are animated by silken thread (Figure  4.7). The textile features many long and layered stitches,

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Figure  4.6  Shepherd’s Boy in a Storm, 1781, Richard Earlom/Henry Birche after Gainsborough, Yale Center for British Art.

Figure 4.7  Shepherd’s Boy in a Storm, 1800, Mary Linwood, replica after Gainsborough.

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which create a sense of dimensionality that is particularly noticeable in the dog. In the catalogue entry for the replica, Linwood used an excerpt from the Iliad to elicit her audience’s sympathy for the vulnerable young boy and elevate her subject matter.95 The verses describe Agamemnon’s encounters with Idomeneus, the Aiantes, and Nestor following the wounding of his younger brother Menelaus. Linwood’s excerpt dovetails nicely with Gainsborough’s imagery, for it equates Agamemnon’s protective behavior with a shepherd who sees an oncoming storm and drives his flock into a sheltering cave.96 To some, the poetry may have suggested that modern British art as practiced by Gainsborough was approaching the prestige of Classical subject matter. Linwood’s Cottage Children with an Ass (now lost), completed in 1799, featured wood gatherers set against a backdrop of cottage and forest. Like Linwood’s other copies of Gainsborough and Westall paintings, its subjects were at the whim of forces larger than themselves. Once again, Linwood utilized expressive poetry in her exhibition catalogue to dramatize the plight of the Cottage Children and enhance her  visitors’ aesthetic experience. Lines from “To a Young Ass” (1794), written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834), a member of the popular Lake Circle, accompanied Linwood’s textile. In the opening lines from Coleridge’s poem, the poet speaks of the humble creature’s virtue, Poor little Foal of an oppressed race! I love the languid patience of thy face: And oft with gentle hand I give thee bread, And clap thy ragged coat, and pat thy head.97

His verse was also intended to elicit sympathy for the beleaguered pack animal and the small workers on its back, symbols of a disappearing British way of life.98 Her choice of Coleridge here was a wise one, for it linked her work to a popular and recently published poem.99 Linwood’s Biographical Sketches and the embroiderer’s scrapbook provide more information about the significance of the Cottage Children with an Ass replica. In the Biographical Sketches, her copies of Gainsborough’s Ass and Children, Woodman, and Shepherd’s Boy in a Storm are described as “invaluable because THESE are the ONLY EXISTING copies [original emphasis].”100 In the entry on Gainsborough, the painter is also placed within a pantheon of great past and present artists including Raphael, Rubens, van Dyck, Claude, and Reynolds. His ability to create first-rate copies of paintings is also praised, a skill that was highly valued by Linwood. Her scrapbook (one of two that she created) also contains evidence of her Gainsborough copies. A print of Cottage Children with an Ass, a memento of the painting’s owner or the loan itself, is seen alongside other rural scenes, some of them by George Morland (Figure 4.8).101 The scrapbook, with its mixture of original and mass-produced objects, is a powerful reminder of the material quality or “object-ness” of Linwood’s embroidery practice, as seen in the Leicester Square installations. Like embroidery, scrapbooks (also known as Ladies Albums) were associated with femininity, domesticity, and embroidery in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.102 The two practices were linked in the minds of nineteenth-century educators, who believed that the actions of cutting and pasting honed the manual dexterity required for needlework.103

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Figure  4.8  Cottage Children with an Ass, 1791, Richard Earlom/Henry Birche after Gainsborough, Linwood Scrapbook, Leicester Museums and Galleries.

Small enough to be portable, the scrapbook comprises the material culture of Linwood’s memory, a mini archive of her favorite subject matter, travel, and an intimate memento of her friendships. It is akin to a diary, journal, or portfolio for someone whose work has been largely ignored or mis-categorized, a dilemma that is all too often encountered when studying female artists.104 The arrangement of Linwood’s scrapbook is nonlinear and informal, suggesting leisure time spent with other women assembling their own.105 Its seemingly arbitrary organization and lack of captions are perhaps frustrating features, but they are in line with Linwood’s other creative endeavors. Most of the information in the Biographical Sketches, for example, appears to be in random order and was cut and pasted from other sources without attribution. Such an approach suggests Linwood’s practice as a copyist. Linwood’s scrapbook, like her gallery, Biographical Sketches, and exhibition catalogues, features a proliferation of rural imagery by Linwood and other artists. Although identifying information is lacking, many of its rural scenes were based on her prints of Morland and Westall paintings.106

The “Incomparable” George Morland Linwood’s emulation of Morland shares several features with her study of Gainsborough’s painting. She replicated six of their paintings apiece, more than any other artist in her gallery. The two artists, both of whom produced quintessentially

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English scenes of rustic simplicity, greatly appealed to London audiences and Linwood herself. The romanticizing images recalled the rural areas of Leicestershire that were disappearing in the wake of industrialization.107 As with Gainsborough, Linwood’s replicas of Morland paintings served a commemorative function, as most of them were created after the artist’s premature death in 1804.108 In the Biographical Sketches, effusive language was once again used in the entry on Morland, whose paintings were described as “of inestimable value.”109 Linwood’s replica of a Morland painting, The Farmer’s Stable, was particularly significant to her. The painting had been created at the Leicestershire home of Enderby Hall in 1793, where she likely met Morland during her stay with the Loraine Smiths.110 Linwood placed her replica in an elaborate frame, hanging it in a place of honor close to the entrance to her exhibition (Color Plate 1). Although none of Linwood’s Morland replicas survive, his presence in her exhibition catalogues, inventory, and Biographical Sketches constructs an outline of her replication process. Because the copies were based on prints, most of them were much smaller than her Gainsborough replicas. Prints after Morland were ubiquitous in late eighteenth-century London; his brother-in-law, William Ward (1766–1826), often engraved his work. Several galleries in London featured Morland’s painting and prints in the opening years of the nineteenth century, years that coincide with Linwood’s replication of his work.111 After the successful debut of The Farmer’s Stable in 1804, Linwood created five small textile copies inspired by prints in her collection: Dogs Watching, Setters, Kennel of Dogs, Dogs at Play, and Pigs, four of which debuted at her Dublin exhibition of 1806.112 In 1809, Linwood’s final replica of the collaborative Litter of Foxes (by Morland and Loraine Smith) debuted, another example of the collaborative artistic networks of which Linwood was a part.113 Linwood chose pastoral poetry to accompany the Morland replicas that amplified her gallery’s cultural patriotism, a celebration of British art and culture. The textile copy of Dogs Watching, for example, was accompanied by lines from Pope’s Windsor Forest, which she had also used in her catalogues for the Lodona replica. In the epic poem, the forest is populated by Greek gods who oversee the industry and harmony of its dwellers and laborers in the nearby idyllic countryside.114 The poem is an example of the political georgic, for Pope’s lines describe the health of the nation in terms of its natural environment. As with Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Allegory of Good and Bad Government (1338–9), the quality of governance affects the entire realm. In Windsor Forest, Pope highlights the bad leadership of the Saxons, Danes, and William Rufus (r. 1087–1100) by emphasizing their poor care of the woodlands, a microcosm of the English nation. In contrast, the good stewardship of the Stuart rulers yielded bustling cities, fertile fields, and verdant forests. In Windsor Forest, the vicissitudes of national rule are likewise signaled by the activities of dogs and horses, animals dear to the English. These creatures were also vital to the health of the nation’s countryside and ecosystem because of their roles in hunting and harvesting. By using lines from Pope’s poem several times in her gallery, Linwood clearly took advantage of its patriotic appeal among her countrymen. In her exhibition catalogue, the lines that accompany Dogs Watching describe Fair Liberty,

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Britannia’s Goddess, overseeing a good hunt and husbandry, a deep-rooted metaphor for good leadership and management of natural resources: Before his lord the ready spaniel bounds, panting with hope he tries the furrow’d grounds But when the tainted gales the game betray, couch’d close he lies, and meditates the prey.115

In Linwood’s gallery, a replica of a second hunting scene by Morland, Setters, was coupled with the pastoral poetry of Pope’s friend and fellow dog lover, John Gay (1685–1732). To accompany the Setters, she used an excerpt from his Rural Sports: A Georgic  (1713), only the second georgic poem written on an English subject.116 For both Gay and Pope, the dedicatee of Rural Sports, shrewd hunting and planting were key to maintaining the fertility of the English countryside: Let the keen hunter from the chase refrain, nor render all the ploughman’s labour vain, When Ceres pours out plenty from her horn, and clothes the fields with golden ears of corn.117

Gay wrote of the careful use of the forest, fields, and their creatures were a microcosm of judicious national rule: The subtle dog scours with sagacious nose along the field, and snuffs each breeze that blows; Against the wind he takes his prudent way, while the strong gale directs him to the prey Now the warm scent assures the covey near, he treads with caution.118

Linwood’s use of Pope and Gay’s pastoral verses were yet another example of her cultural patriotism because they amplified her celebration of English subject matter artists in her gallery. Gay’s poetry appeared again Linwood’s catalogue entry for Kennel of Dogs, a Morland replica that she hung next to the Setters in her gallery. She excerpted lines from Gay’s The Shepherd and the Philosopher (c. 1730), a poetic fable about knowledge. In the poem, the city-dwelling philosopher encounters the shepherd’s rustic cottage, where he asks his host about his education. The shepherd responds that ancient philosophy teaches deceit. In contrast, nature and its system of relationships are the best teachers. Its animals, like the dog and dove, teach him to be a good caretaker of the land, for which he is very grateful: My dog, the trustiest of his kind, with gratitude inflames my mind; I mark his true, his faithful way, and in my service copy Tray.119

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For Linwood, herself a dog owner, Gay’s lines were well-suited for her replica of Kennel of Dogs, which depicted several spaniels at rest. The peaceful co-existence of land, man, and creature in her textile and in these lines was a metaphor for the health of the British nation. Linwood’s use of William Somerville’s (1675–1742) poetry alongside her copy of Morland’s Dogs at Play reiterates some of the themes mentioned above. Lines from The Chace (1735), an early georgic poem, were paired with her images of dogs tousling in front of a cottage.120 The poem’s four cantos focus on inherently English subject matter: beloved kings, the history of hunting in England, and the breeding and care of hounds. William the Conqueror’s success, blessed by the Greek gods, is framed within a hunting chronicle in England, the “fair land of liberty.”121 His defeat of the Saxons helped unify English nobles and their vassals, described as hunters and hounds in Somerville’s verse. Under William’s judicious display of power and control, Successive huntsmen learn’d to join in bloody social leagues, the multitude Dispers’d, to size, to sort their various tribes, to rear, feed, hunt, and discipline the pack. Hail, happy Britain! highly favour’d isle, and Heaven’s peculiar care!122

Linwood’s verbal and visual combination here underlined the themes of her other Morland replicas, a love of England and its creatures, whose health and prosperity are held in place by its sensible rule. By choosing these verses, Linwood celebrated the health of the British nation, the countryside, and Morland himself, who was known as a great sportsman. The scenes created by Gainsborough, Westall, and Morland that Linwood copied were examples of the working poor, an industrious population that deserved compassion. Prints of Morland’s work were particularly popular with embroiderers because his idyllic rural imagery was readily linked to the domestic sphere. As Parker argues in The Subversive Stitch (1984), these scenes often inferred that women, regardless of social class, were the moral and social guardians of their family.123 Copying these scenes brought an extra patina of honor to needle workers, for the humble subject matter ameliorated any accusation of vanity that might be leveled at Linwood, especially if her works were exhibited publicly, as hers were. In her gallery, however, these images, experienced along with the poetry of Thomson, Pope, Gay, and Somerville, were also tied to a larger practice of cultural patriotism in which the prosperous English countryside was a microcosm of the nation’s health and, eventually, the basis of the foundation of its maritime supremacy.

Conclusion Linwood’s replicas of rural scenes by Gainsborough, Barker, Westall, and Morland provided visitors with an imaginary journey in her gallery alongside secular pilgrims like the woodman, cottage dwellers, gleaners, and their animal companions. As

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Uvedale Price wrote, the georgic scenes enabled viewers to empathically connect with humble folks along with “the lower families of animated nature, … and rejoice with the cattle who ruminate in the valley, or even with the living plants that drink the bright sun and the balmy air beside them.”124 Linwood’s placement of her replicas in the Cottage, Grove, and Ruins were three-dimensional embodiments of the picturesque, bringing to life forest dwellers and cottage tenants in a novel way that beckoned people like the effusive Tom Taylor and Mary Kirby to her popular Leicester Square gallery. There, looking at a textile copy of a painting (itself an invented image), affected her visitors in nearly the same way as the sight of the original, an effect that Price described in On the Picturesque. Emotive pastoral poetry that celebrated the English nation further enhanced this aesthetic experience. Finally, after May 1810, her copies of the destroyed paintings by Gainsborough performed an important art historical function. They created an afterlife for artworks that no longer existed, allowing subsequent generations the ability to study them, as she had learned from the originals. Linwood’s long-term success in Leicester Square was in part due to the diversity of optical experiences in her gallery that mirrored the eclectic entertainment in her neighborhood.125 Her visitors walked through the more traditional main room to the smaller installations with more unique vantage points like the Cottage, Grove, and Ruins. There they were closer to her replicas and the material objects that accompanied them. Her experimentation in these chambers ultimately yielded a multimedia experience comprised of textile, painting, sculpture, and poetry, highlighting an inventiveness not usually associated with copying. The immersive features of the installations and her memorialization of past eras and beloved artists situate her within the Romantic movement. As I have argued in this chapter, the Leicester Square Gallery represented a logical culmination of her previous display goals: the elevation of British artists and authors who celebrated a quickly disappearing rural way of life. The venue’s extended popularity in the opening decades of the nineteenth century was certainly encouraged by the lack of a public gallery dedicated to British art. The pastoral installations discussed in this chapter, created by a metropolitan woman, represented one aspect of early nineteenthcentury British identity, namely the disappearance of the rural countryside in the wake of enclosure and industrialization. Other interrelated facets of British identity on display in Linwood’s gallery include imperial expansion (the Dens) and good stewardship (the Gothic Room).

5

Of Students and Studying: The Academic Tradition and the Scripture Room

When Scottish author William Chambers first saw Linwood’s replica of Our Saviour Blessing the Bread and Wine after Carlo Dolci, he was struck by its beauty and rarefied display (Color Plate 12). He wrote that it had the appearance of a finely finished painting rather than a textile.1 The highlight of the Scripture Room, its placement resembled an altarpiece, for it hung above a table in an elevated niche, surrounded by purple and gold velvet drapery and softly illuminated by subdued gas lighting. Unlike Linwood’s other replicas, it was covered by glass. A reviewer in the Gentleman’s Magazine of 1813 similarly enthused about the work, “There is one picture whose subject surpasses all the rest in sublimity, grandeur and interest, demands notice as signal and alone as its well imagined situation in these apartments;—contemplation as deep as our reverence naturally inspires; and encomiums great in proportion as it must be understood and felt by all mankind.”2 Joining the stunning Dolci replica were three other images inspired by Renaissance and Baroque Italian art, copies of Raphael’s Madonna della Sedia, Carlo Maratti’s Nativity, and Ludovico Carracci’s Deposition of Christ. The Scripture Room’s focus on Continental religious art was in stark contrast to the preceding chambers, which emphasized secular British art. Although these religious textiles have been viewed as outliers in comparison to the rest of Linwood’s collection, this room was an integral part of her cultural patriotism, or celebration of British art. Their proximity to textile copies inspired by modern British masters was intentional. By doing this, Linwood made a statement that British art was on par with the Continental masters of religious painting, an argument made by Reynolds in his fourteenth discourse. Reynolds, a champion of British art during his lifetime, played a key role in Linwood’s aesthetic development in several ways. In addition to the award-winning embroidery of King Lear after Reynold’s original, Linwood made a replica of the famed artist’s 1776 Self Portrait and copied three of his fancy pictures, sentimental images of young children. She used this trio to commemorate the recently deceased artist and to draw visitors to her Hanover Square exhibition of 1798–1801. The replicas after Reynolds were regularly hung in the main or first room of each of her venues, making them some of the first works that her visitors saw. Imitation later gave way to a broader form of emulation, however, in different parts of the Leicester Square gallery. Most of the chambers here were populated with works inspired by modern

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British art, while the Scripture Room, a new feature of this final venue, featured images that embodied the Grand Style of history painting described in Reynolds’s Discourses. The idealized images were meant to convey a lofty aesthetic and moral message and were at the apex of the Academy’s hierarchy of genres. Linwood’s memorialization of the President of the Royal Academy was ahead of its time since it predated the first retrospective of his work held at the British Institution in 1813.

Replicating Reynolds Part of Linwood’s admiration for Reynolds stemmed from his role as an educator who championed British art, an effort at the heart of her Leicester Square Gallery. She balanced the London exhibition with teaching young girls one hundred miles away at her Leicester boarding school until she closed it in the early 1840s. These two endeavors were symbiotic; the income from the Priory boarding school funded the renovation of the gallery in London. Linwood learned the art of teaching in her youth, but the role of gallery entrepreneur came more gradually. She honed her skills to protect her interests and attract repeat visitors to the London venues. Linwood’s dual roles of businesswoman and educator were interwoven in other ways. A short piece in the Morning Post of Monday, April 20, 1835, for example, described her as “a schoolmistress at the head of her art,” who has achieved perfection in it “even during the superintendence of the onerous and pressing duties of a boarding school.”3 The article continued that at the Leicester Square Gallery, the eye gazes with intensity at paintings (my emphasis) by the first masters, and you are told that it is but needlework which has made figures start into life and animation, and has carried you back to the periods of ancient and modern history. It was only by the most minute inspection that the illusion is destroyed, and the visitor is convinced that the delicacy of colours, the discriminative treatment of light and shade, the admirable drawings, and harmony of the whole, are not the emanations of the pencil, but are derived by the needle.4

Linwood’s textiles are described as illusionistic images, replete with features seen in high-quality oil paintings, such as chiaroscuro, subtle coloring, and a balanced composition. Their lifelike qualities animated the textile and its surrounding space, simultaneously entertaining and educating visitors by transporting them back in time. The Royal Academy forbade the exhibition of copies, an art form that lay at the heart of Linwood’s gallery. Even so, she was clearly influenced in other ways by the institution and its first president. She adopted many of the Royal Academy’s successful business, display, and pedagogical practices, thus ensuring the success of her exhibitions in their early years. Her admission price and hours, for example, closely paralleled those of the Academy.5 The fee included a catalogue whose numbers corresponded to the placement of textiles throughout her exhibition; the publication was in lieu of wall labels. In the Leicester Square Gallery, the hang of the works in the first room clearly replicated the crowded red damask walls of the Great Room at Somerset House and

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Continental practice. Linwood frequently replicated paintings and artists whom Reynolds discussed in his Discourses; her Scripture Room highlighted several such Continental artists such as Raphael and Carlo Dolci. Finally, she also copied five of Reynolds’s paintings, a number only surpassed by her Gainsborough and Morland replicas, which numbered six apiece. Ambiguity shrouds the encounters between Reynolds and Linwood, however, in part because of her poorly documented career, a common omission in women’s histories. Secondary sources recount that the two met several times and that he suggested several of his own paintings that she should copy.6 While these meetings cannot be verified, her replication of paintings by him and by artists whom he venerated, such as Raphael, Rubens, and Reni, points to the likelihood of an encounter. Although the 1797 compilation of Reynolds’s Discourses does not appear on Linwood’s inventory, multiple pamphlets are listed; perhaps she acquired the Discourses in their originally published form.7 Reynolds and Linwood were also both interested in artistic and replicative technology like the camera obscura and polygraph popular  in  the late eighteenth-century artistic and scientific circles connected to Linwood’s mentor Boulton. Some sources have inaccurately claimed that Linwood rented his former Leicester Square studio for her gallery. In actuality, the two locations were a block and a half from each other, though the proximity was certainly part of the neighborhood’s appeal to her. If Linwood did meet with Reynolds in the mid-1780s, he may have suggested that she copy his King Lear, a poignant depiction of the elderly monarch. An example of “Bard mania,” the figure of King Lear, was particularly popular in literary and artistic circles, for an aging king saddled with unruly children and a possible French invasion revealed some timely parallels with Georgian England. The dimensions and colors of Linwood’s version, completed between 1784 and 1785, are close to that of the original, which suggests that she viewed it in person and could have completed it with the help of either a studio copy or an engraving.8 There was no shortage of copies of the popular artist’s paintings, making it easy for Linwood to utilize them for her own embroidered replicas, even if she never met him. At the Pantheon exhibition of 1787, Linwood drew attention to her version of King Lear in three ways. She hung it strategically; it was the first work that viewers saw upon entering and her exhibition guide announced the textile’s medal-winning status. In the guide, it was also one of only two replicas whose entry included verse.9 Shakespeare’s lines heightened the drama of the textile’s display by describing the old king’s wanderings in a storm, as he rages at his daughters Regan and Goneril for their disloyalty: Blow winds, Spout Cataracts, Hurricanoes [sic] fall, Fantastic Lightnings singe, singe my White Head (Act III: Scene II).

In this part of the play, Shakespeare links the stormy weather to the storm within Lear—his increasingly deranged mind—and Linwood’s excerpt guided her viewers to the appropriate emotional responses of fear and empathy. In her subsequent Hanover Square exhibition catalogue, Linwood added ten more lines from Shakespeare that

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built on the previous excerpt and culminated in the piteous line: “here I stand your slave, a poor, infirm, weak and despis’d old man.” Once again, some of her viewers may have associated this image with their own ailing George III. Linwood’s King Lear stayed very close to the original, an oval composition in which the king’s head is seen against a stormy sky that parallels his fury and chaotic mind. She used long, brushstroke-like stitches to create dynamic swirls behind the king’s head (Figure 5.1). They are also seen in the image’s feigned oval, the billowing crimson mantle, and its ermine trim. She created chiaroscuro using long stitches of dark thread on the king’s face and on his cloak, much of which still retains its vivid red. Shorter stitches on his beard and around his face mimic the appearance of facial hair (Color Plate 7). The verisimilitude and dynamism of Linwood’s award-winning King Lear are also seen in her replica of Reynolds’s Self-Portrait (1776) (Figure  5.2). A  mirror image of the original, it was based on a print and/or one of several studio copies made by Reynolds’s pupil James Northcote.10 Linwood enjoyed a close professional relationship with Northcote in the last decade of the eighteenth century, purchasing several paintings from him and suggesting that her brother William do the same.11 This contact bolsters the likelihood of contact between Linwood and Reynolds. The replication of Reynolds’s Self Portrait marked the only time that she copied an artist’s portrait besides her own. As such, it was a declaration of his role in her aesthetic development and connected her to a revered Academic lineage, especially important for a woman artist in the early nineteenth century. In the Leicester Square

Figure 5.1  King Lear (detail), c. 1785, Mary Linwood, replica after Sir Joshua Reynolds, Bowes Museum.

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Figure 5.2  Sir Joshua Reynolds, c. 1800, Mary Linwood, replica after Sir Joshua Reynolds, Bowes Museum.

gallery, the embroidered portrait of Reynolds hung in the first room near Hoppner’s oil painting of Linwood. In Reynolds’s Self Portrait, he wears the academic robes of an Honorary Doctor of Law at the University of Oxford, symbolizing his intellectual accomplishments. The portrait highlighted the social mobility and professional success of the Academician, a message that surely appealed to Linwood, who also wanted to succeed on a national stage. Reynolds stands in front of a blue sky and forest, a placement that suggests that Reynolds’s achievements were innate, a product of his own nature, rather than external forces. This type of juxtaposition appealed to Linwood, whose portraits by Westall and Hobday also feature a natural backdrop. As with the Lear replica and her own embroidered self-portrait, Linwood utilized several stitch sizes and types of thread in the Reynolds portrait. Shorter wool stitches are seen in and around his face, while longer ones form the background and the Academician’s robes, some of which still retain their crimson hue. Linwood offset the flattening effects of her woolen thread by using silk thread in Reynolds’s pupils, replicating his powerful outward gaze. As with the Lear, the clouds above Reynolds’s head reinforce the intensity of his expression and his intellectual rumination; Linwood’s longer stitches there emphasize these effects.

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Linwood replicated three more of Reynolds’s popular paintings in the mid-1790s: Laughing Girl (Girl Leaning on a Pedestal) (c. 1782), Girl and Kitten (exhibited in 1788), and Sleeping Girl (1790). All three images are fancy pictures, sweet scenes of young children engaged in everyday activities. Female artists, like Reynolds’s own sister Frances, often replicated his versions of these sentimental scenes.12 Linwood’s embroidered trio (of which only the Laughing Girl survives) were similar in composition and debuted in 1798, the opening year of the Hanover Square exhibition (Figure 5.3). The replicas of the fancy pictures all feature a proximate image of an adorable child, which would have harmonized with the embroidered replicas of young cottagers after Gainsborough and Russell also displayed in her gallery. Linwood’s message of cultural patriotism was also reinforced by her catalogue entries for the textiles, which included lines from the poetry of Milton, Somerville, and Cowley. All three passages underlined the universality of human experiences such as happiness, hard work, and nostalgia. The excerpt from Milton accompanying The Laughing Girl amplified some of the features of the happy girl in the textile, including “mirth, and joy, and jollity … and wreathed smiles.” The Sleeping Girl was seen alongside Cowley’s lines about the joy of rest following a long, productive day. Finally, the verses for The Girl and Kitten came from The Chace by Somerville, one of Linwood’s favorite poems.

Figure 5.3  Laughing Girl, 1798, Mary Linwood, replica after Sir Joshua Reynolds, Private Collection.

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For both Reynolds and Linwood, the copying process had an important educational function and improvements in reproductive technology made copies increasingly accessible to many artists. In his second discourse, Reynolds instructed students to “enter into a kind of competition, by painting a similar subject, and making a companion to any picture that you consider as a model. After you have finished your work, place it near the model, and compare them carefully together.”13 Reynolds, too, collected and replicated the work of earlier Old Master artists such as Rembrandt, Reni, Carracci, and others for creative inspiration.14 Rembrandt’s manipulation of shadows and shading to give objects a soft relief was of particular admiration, and Reynolds amassed works then attributed to the Dutch painter to study this effect.15 The original Laughing Girl by Reynolds, for example, is an homage to Rembrandt’s Girl at a Window (1645), a painting in the Dulwich College Collection that the Academician was able to study in person.16 In the Laughing Girl, one can see his assimilation of Rembrandt’s loose brushwork, warm color palette, and verisimilitude. In each image, the simply dressed young girl emerges out of the shadows seemingly about to speak and move into the viewer’s space. By making a pendant to Girl at a Window, Reynolds implied that he too had this ability, for he had created something more than just a mere copy. According to eighteenth-century French art theorist Roger de Piles (1635–1709), who was an early owner of Girl at a Window, Rembrandt placed the painting outside his window, where several passersby mistook it for a real girl. Laughing Girl and its creative imitation of Rembrandt thus situated Reynolds within a canonical artistic lineage and traditions of illusionism and artistic rivalry that stretched back to antiquity. While de Piles’s story has since been disproven, it was a variation of Pliny the Elder’s description of the contest between fifth-century B.C. Greek painters Zeuxis and Parrhesias to determine artistic supremacy. Parrhesias’s mastery of illusionism was proved greater than that of his rival, demonstrating his ability to deceive people with his art, as Rembrandt later did. In copying Rembrandt, Reynolds sought to emulate the Dutch painter’s brushstroke, chiaroscuro, and realism, qualities of the Ancients, which Reynolds described as the “magazine of common [artistic] property” for academic artists.17 Linwood’s replication of Reynolds’s paintings and acquisition of prints after his work and that of Rembrandt were an important part of her education, allowing her to compile an artistic portfolio, like a student at the Royal Academy.18 Reynolds also frequently made multiple copies of his own paintings to resolve aesthetic conundrums. Because the fancy pictures were often painted without a specific patron in mind, they were ideal for this endeavor.19 The first version of his Laughing Girl, for example, was exhibited as Girl Leaning on a Pedestal at the 1782 Royal Academy.20 It features a young girl with a white blouse and red skirt who looks out at the viewer, while leaning on a desk covered by a swath of drapery. The curves of the girl’s posture and clothing contrast with the solidity of the desk on the right side of the painting. In Linwood’s version, the drapery is one of the most successful parts of the embroidery, like the rendering of fabric in her copies of King Lear, the Reynolds SelfPortrait, and the Salvator Mundi by Dolci. In the Laughing Girl, the  embroiderer created dimensionality by blanketing layers of long straight stitches to depict the drapery, sleeves, and skirt, while shorter ones are seen on the girl’s face. The shorter,

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Figure 5.4  Laughing Girl (detail), 1798, Mary Linwood, replica after Sir Joshua Reynolds, Private Collection.

time-intensive stitches emphasize facial details, such as the shading underneath the girl’s nostrils (Figure 5.4). Her hair is constructed of blond, brunette, auburn, and black hues, emulating the blend and tactility of her prototype. The bright red thread seen on the young girl’s mouth retains much of its original carnelian hue, like the red of Lear’s stole and Reynolds’s academic robes. At first blush, Linwood’s image of the Laughing Girl appears to be the type of rote and inferior reproduction that Reynolds criticized in his second discourse as a “delusive kind of industry.”21 For example, the textile lacks the dimensionality of her other Reynolds; this is especially noticeable in the girl’s face, which appears flat against the dark backdrop. This deficit, however, provides a clue to Linwood’s inspiration for the replica, as does its completion date and size. It was almost certainly inspired by a polygraph, a chemical process of replication that yielded multiple copies. A polygraph of the Laughing Girl was exhibited at the Polygraphic Society between 1787 and 1793, rather than either version of the original oil painting.22 The polygraphed versions could not capture the depth or texture of an oil painting, thus leading to a flatter prototype, a feature that Linwood’s replica captures.23 The Polygraphic Society did not exhibit copies of The Girl and Kitten and Sleeping Girl, however, which suggests that Linwood’s now lost copies of them were based on engravings and/or full-scale studio copies, like the Reynolds’s Self-Portrait and King Lear. The diversity of Linwood’s prototypes for her replicas (especially those after Reynolds) points to the array of reproductive technology and artistic source material in the late eighteenth century.

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Even for someone who championed singular artistic genius like Reynolds, technological tools like the polygraph and camera obscura (also known as a pinhole camera) were appealing, for their assistance could lead to artistic innovation.24 Recent research by Matthew Hunter, for example, has revealed that the Royal Academy president owned a camera obscura in the 1780s, which likely helped the artist to create drawings and study vision, especially as his vision declined.25 According to Hunter, the device’s projection abilities match the dimensions of a late landscape painting produced by Reynolds. The object suggests that Reynolds’s views on artistic originality and imitation were more consistent in theory than practice, a discrepancy that Nathaniel Hone mocked in The Conjurer (1775). A subsequent owner of the camera obscura recounted a conversation between the painter and Elizabeth Baldwyn, Lady Yates (d. 1808), a gifted embroiderer who had borrowed the device from him. Reynolds told Yates that he thought that Linwood was very talented, an observation that strengthens the likelihood of contact between the two artists.26 Linwood also owned several prints of his work, including Kitty Fisher as Cleopatra and his portrait of Lord Mansfield (William Murray).27 Although the contours of Linwood’s relationship with Reynolds remain uncertain, her replication of his work shared an important feature with Gainsborough and Morland copies. The replicas of his popular paintings acted as both a posthumous memorial to a beloved artist and contributed to Linwood’s self-fashioning as a legitimate and well-educated artist.

Continental Copies Linwood’s replicas of six Italian paintings in the Leicester Square Gallery also signal her veneration of Reynolds: the four in the Scripture Room (copies after Dolci, Raphael, Reni, and L. Carracci) and a replica of a second Dolci (David) and Reni (St. Peter) were displayed in the venue’s first room. The religious quartet in the Scripture Room exemplified the type of painting that Reynolds discussed in the Discourses.28 With the help of Linwood’s exhibition catalogues, her gallery goers could compare Continental examples of the Grand Style to the work of modern English masters like Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Wright of Derby. One of her newspaper advertisements explicitly invited its readers to do so, stating that they could view a “numerous SELECTION wrought from the best of the English school; with a variety of SACRED SUBJECTS from the Ancient Masters, Raphael, Carlo Dolci, Carracci & c.”29 This was a patriotic and religious message that Linwood, as both a gallery owner and a teacher, was eager to disseminate to her London audience. This experience may have served as a proxy Grand Tour for those visitors who could not travel because of finances, military upheaval, or gender—factors that had limited Linwood’s short trip abroad during the Peace of Amiens. Both Reynolds and Linwood venerated Guido Reni, a Baroque artist best known for his classicizing style and allegiance to the Bolognese school of Annibale Carracci. Reynolds collected many paintings, prints, and drawings by Reni, hoping to appropriate elements of the Baroque painter’s expressive style to elevate his own portraiture.30 Reni was also an early source of inspiration for Linwood, whose first

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religious embroidery was a replica of the painter’s bust-length St. Peter. Linwood’s now-destroyed St. Peter debuted at the Pantheon in 1787, where she hoped the artist’s fame with the British would attract visitors. She later hung it in the main room of the Leicester Square gallery, close to her replica of Dolci’s David. Like Reni, the Baroque artist Carlo Dolci enjoyed a burst of popularity in the eighteenth century; art historian Johann David Passavant (1787–1861) described him as “that favorite of the English.”31 In addition to the David, Linwood copied his Our Saviour Blessing the Bread and Wine (later Salvator Mundi), which eventually became the centerpiece of the Scripture Room. Both replicas feature a proximate view of an attractive young man whose direct gaze implies intimacy with the viewer. For Linwood, Dolci’s sensitive depictions aligned with other religious paintings that she copied early on such as St. Peter after Reni and Madonna della Sedia after Raphael. Dolci made three autographed versions of the David, one of which may have been the basis for Linwood’s textile (Color Plate 15).32 Unlike her putative prototype, Linwood’s replica contains no sword or trace of the giant’s head, omissions that likely made the painting less gruesome and thus more attractive to her visitors. Linwood was at her best with the objects in her David replica such as the woven rope, the delicately detailed cuffs, and David’s jaunty fur-lined hat. It, along with much of his cloak, retains much of its original red. Darker gray threads capture the shadow on the rope and his left cuff, creating an illusion of depth in stark contrast with the flatness of the prophet’s face. Linwood’s creation of her second and much more famous Dolci copy, Our Saviour Blessing the Bread and Wine (later Salvator Mundi), is much better documented than the David replica. It was based on a popular painting at Burleigh House owned by the Marquis of Exeter, Henry Cecil, who encouraged artists to visit Burleigh House to study his collection.33 There, the Dolci painting hung by itself in a separate room, where it was (and still is) further highlighted by an elaborately carved giltwood frame (Figure 5.5).34 Although the circumstances of Linwood’s visit to the Cecils’ ancestral home remain unclear, it seems likely that she had a prolonged stay, for her textile captures much of the chiaroscuro and emotionality present in the original painting. According to one of Linwood’s nieces, Cecil immediately recognized the quality of her replica, reportedly offering her 3000 guineas (in today’s currency, $493,000 or £377,500) for it. She refused the offer, an exceptional response given his liberality toward artists.35 Although the amount begs credulity, the story relays two things about Linwood’s early career. To maintain a veneer of respectability, she wanted to be seen as above financial concerns, which at that point she was not. Secondly, she wanted to keep her textiles together, so that they could be used as an educational tool, like Cecil’s collection. Linwood’s friend and art connoisseur Henry Noel also remarked on the replica’s high quality, writing to his sister in 1792 that the textile “deserves Much Praise. I like it in one respect better than the original, in that not having so much of the green Tint.”36 Perhaps Noel was referring to the bright blue of Christ’s robe or to the  olive tone that permeates the painting’s background, which Linwood mitigated using a soft brown shade. In the background, similar brownish hues replaced a darker brown, creating a sense of warmth that amplified the tenderness of the depiction. As soon as Linwood exhibited her replica of Our Saviour Blessing the Bread and  Wine at the Hanover Square venue, it won her renown, as she had anticipated

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Figure 5.5  Salvator Mundi, 1650, Carlo Dolci, The Burghley House Collection.

(Color Plate 12). It was the last work that viewers saw there and at the Leicester Square Gallery, which created a sense of calm and awe with which her viewers departed the venues. According to a Mrs. Chute and her daughter Augusta, who visited the Hanover Square Gallery in 1798, the textile replica equaled the quality of the original painting, which they had also seen.37 This grand finale placed Linwood in the same talented realm as Dolci. In 1799, her second year at the venue, she relocated the embroidered replica to a separate room, imitating the solitary display of the original in the Marquis’ collection. She also renamed it Salvator Mundi, one of the names by which it was known at Burleigh House. The new name downplayed its sacramental features and linked it to a well-known painting in England by Leonardo, which also features a handsome and gentle Christ.38 The large Leicester Square gallery space allowed Linwood to continue her dramatic exhibition of Our Saviour Blessing the Bread and Wine. There it hung in the Scripture Room with three other religious replicas on deep red walls whose decoration matched the first room of her gallery. Linwood used a variety of stitches in the Salvator Mundi, emulating the brushstrokes in her prototype. Longer ones are seen on the table and behind Christ’s head, while shorter ones comprise the extremities and the ringlets of brown hair that cascade onto his shoulders (Figure  5.6). Her depictions of the bread and chalice are some of the most striking aspects of her replica (Figures 5.7, 5.8). The host is held aloft in Christ’s

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Figure 5.6  Salvator Mundi (detail), 1789, Mary Linwood, replica after Carlo Dolci © Royal Collection Trust/His Majesty King Charles III.

Figure 5.7  Salvator Mundi (detail), 1789, Mary Linwood, replica after Carlo Dolci © Royal Collection Trust/His Majesty King Charles III.

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Figure 5.8  Salvator Mundi (detail), 1789, Mary Linwood, replica after Carlo Dolci © Royal Collection Trust/His Majesty King Charles III.

foreshortened left hand and projects into the viewer’s space. Linwood enhanced its dimensionality by blanketing it, building it out of several layers of shorter stitches. The use of pink thread on his left fingertips convincingly depicts his grip, while gray strands suggest the bread’s shadow. Christ’s deftly shaded right hand is held aloft in a gesture of blessing (Figure 5.9). The extended shadows of the chalice and paten replicate Dolci’s light source, which comes from the left-hand side of the composition. Its refraction is seen in the minute flecks of white that momentarily disrupt the darker grays of the chalice’s body and its bright red rubies. Linwood was particularly successful with the depiction of the fabrics within the textile, a skill seen in her other early replicas such as Reynolds’s Laughing Girl and Linwood’s embroidered Self-Portrait after Russell. In the Salvator Mundi, the folds of the altar cloth spill over the edge of the table, while its lacy white folds cascade like a breaking wave (Color Plate 13). Christ’s face, however, is relatively flat in comparison to the objects on the table, a shortcoming perhaps due to Linwood’s lack of figural artistic training. Linwood’s replica of the Salvator Mundi is unique amongst her textiles, for it entered the Royal Collection following her 1845 death. It retains much of its original color because it has been only infrequently exhibited in the past 175 years. The blues and reds of Christ’s garments are particularly vivid, which is seen even more intensely on the textile’s verso of the image, safeguarded from light destruction. The carnelian red is

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Figure 5.9  Salvator Mundi (detail), 1789, Mary Linwood, replica after Carlo Dolci © Royal Collection Trust/His Majesty King Charles III.

echoed in the rubies on the chalice, whose jewel-like hues remind one of stained glass. The brightness of the colors, especially the reds and blues, coupled with the beauty of Christ, evokes Abbot Suger’s belief in the power of transubstantiation through anagogical imagery in medieval architecture. The Scripture Room was intended to elicit a strong devotional response from her visitors; this reaction was intensified by Linwood’s Salvator Mundi, a seemingly portrait-like depiction of Christ. As Matthew Craske has recently argued, this emotionality was part of the Anglican Evangelicalism in which Linwood was raised.39 Philanthropy was  an important part of this tradition. Each year, Linwood donated several days of ticket sales to The National Society for the Promotion of the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church, an organization devoted to discouraging nonconformist religious beliefs.40 In Leicester, Linwood belonged to the Anglican church of St. Margaret’s, where she was active well into her eighth decade. She played a key role in a fundraising campaign for an additional church to accommodate the growing number of parishioners at St. Margaret’s, where she was eventually buried.41 Linwood’s catalogue entry for the Salvator Mundi also amplified its emotional impact, a strategy that she shrewdly used throughout her gallery spaces. The catalogue

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entry was excerpted from Robert Lowth’s The Genealogy of Christ: as it is represented on the East Window of the College of Winchester (1729): To raise at once our rev’rence and delight To elevate the mind, and charm the sight, To pour religion through th’attentive eye, And waft the soul on wings of extacy [sic] For this the mimic art with nature vies, And bids this visionary form arise. Who views with sober awe, in thought aspires, Catches pure zeal, and, as he gazes, fires; Feels a new ardour to his soul convey’d, Submissive bows, and venerates the shade.42

Lowth’s lines here praise the pre-Reformation artists who made the stained glass at Winchester College, stating that the glass “with nature vies.” Words like raise, elevate, charm, waft, ecstasy, awe, ardor, and aspire encouraged her visitors to respond to the Scripture Room in emotional and spiritual ways. Linwood’s textiles in the Scripture Room, like her Reynolds replicas, also played a key role in her own educational process. The quartet allowed her to engage with Reynolds’s theories about the Grand Style of painting as expressed by past Italian masters. According to the Academician, Raphael’s copying process, because it was freed from exact imitation, allowed him to capture the imaginations, rather than merely the senses, of his spectators, an effect that Linwood also sought. Raphael created an ideal beauty, a Grand Style of painting, that Reynolds described as “intellectual dignity … that ennobles the painter’s art; that lays the line between him and the mere mechanic, and produces those great effects in an instant.”43 Through the imitation of so many models, Raphael “himself became a model for all succeeding painters; always imitating, always original,” words that also described the aspirations of Reynolds and Linwood.44 Linwood’s now lost copy of Raphael’s Madonna della Sedia expressed her allegiance to Reynolds’s academic theory about the Grand Style of painting, an interpretation bolstered by the fact that she first hung it next to her replica of Rubens’s Landscape by Moonlight, a painting owned by Reynolds. Their initial appearance in the Hanover Square exhibition together strengthens the likelihood of a meeting between Reynolds and Linwood in the 1780s.45 Like the Salvator Mundi and the Rubens replica, the textile copy of the Madonna was based on firsthand study of the original painting, perhaps the version owned by Anglo-Irish peer Edmund Henry Pery, 1st Earl of Limerick (1758–1844).46 When tourist John Fiott Lee saw the embroidered replica on display in Dublin in 1806, he enthused that it was “very like the Painting at Lord Limericks, majestic, admirably done, one of the four best” in the exhibition.47 Linwood also owned a mezzotint of the oft-copied painting (now in her scrapbook) and a twentyseven-volume set on the painter, both of which undoubtedly helped in the creation process (Figure 5.10).48 Raphael’s very popular painting contained a plethora of textiles, including a striped turban and fringed dress worn by the Virgin. In Linwood’s version,

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Figure 5.10  Madonna della Sedia, c. 1800, print by unknown engraver, Linwood Scrapbook, Leicester Museums and Galleries.

these were undoubtedly the strongest parts of the copy, given her skill at depicting textiles within a textile. The lines in the catalogue, likely from her own hand, reinforce the image’s celebration of maternity: “Madonnas here decline the head, With fond maternal pleasure fed.”49 The other two textiles in the Scripture Room, a Deposition after Ludovico Carracci and Nativity after Carlo Maratti, depict an image of a vulnerable Christ, like the Madonna della Sedia (Figures 5.11–5.12). Their focus is on the Savior in the care of the Virgin Mary, a pairing that would have had sentimental appeal to many of Linwood’s visitors. Furthermore, the Nativity and the Madonna della Sedia, which hung opposite one another, were comforting maternal scenes whose compositions echoed each other. Thus, the debut of the Carracci and the Maratti copies in the opening year of the Leicester Square gallery provided Linwood with a new way of exhibiting the older Raphael and Dolci copies. In an entrepreneurial move, she encouraged return visitors to her collection, where they could experience her works in a new way. Reynolds had disparate views on Carracci and Maratti, viewing the former as an ingenious painter and gifted teacher and the latter as someone with “no great vigour of mind or strength of original genius.”50 In his second discourse, Reynolds wrote that

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Figure  5.11  Deposition, 1809, Mary Linwood, replica after Ludovico Carracci, Leicester Museums and Galleries.

Figure 5.12  Nativity, 1810, Mary Linwood, replica after Carlo Maratti, Leicester Museums and Galleries.

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Carracci “appears to me to approach the nearest to perfection. His unaffected breadth of light and shadow, the simplicity of colouring, which, holding its proper rank, does not draw aside the least part of the attention from the subject.”51 Carracci’s educational efforts were certainly part of his appeal to both Reynolds and Linwood. Reynolds praised him as an excellent teacher in his second and fifth discourses and Linwood highlighted the educational role of this family in her Biographical Sketches.52 Unfortunately, little is known about Linwood’s production of the Carracci replica; its exact prototype has not yet been identified and the painter is not discussed in the Biographical Sketches.53 Because many of his paintings remained in Bologna during Linwood’s lifetime, she likely based the textile on a large print or a small painting, perhaps a copy of an original Carracci.54 Reynolds, who viewed many of the artist’s paintings firsthand, also owned many drawings by each member of the Carracci family, some of which Linwood may have seen.55 Reynolds praised Carracci’s measured emulation of Correggio and the Venetian painters: “he took only as much from each as would embellish, but not overpower.” He continued: “the simplicity of [Carracci’s] colouring … is better than the more artificial brilliancy of sunshine which enlightens the pictures of Titian.”56 For Reynolds, Carracci (like Raphael) utilized the copying process to create something original. Linwood’s lack of firsthand study of Carracci’s Deposition and her declining eyesight are likely to blame for its inferior quality in comparison to the other Scripture Room replicas.57 In the textile, the Virgin Mary, Christ, and John the Evangelist appear flat against a poorly articulated background that gives no indication of Christ’s final resting place. Her infrequent study of human anatomy is clearly reflected in her depiction of this trio. In contrast, Linwood’s depiction of material objects was characteristically strong, as sculptural folds in the drapery beneath Christ’s limp body are seen. Here she also varied the length of her stitches to emulate brushstrokes, a technique that is present in the beautiful Salvator Mundi replica. Like the Deposition, the Maratti Nativity replica is also poorly documented. Because its prototype has not yet been identified, it is difficult to fully understand Linwood’s decision to replicate his work. Her motivation, however, may be found in Reynolds’s description of the artist who: rarely seizes the imagination by exhibiting the higher excellencies, nor does he captivate us by that originality which attends the painter who thinks for himself. He knew and practiced all the rules of art, and from a composition of Raffaelle, Caracci, and Guido, made up a style, of which the only fault was, that it had no manifest defects and no striking beauties; and that the principles of his composition are never blended together, so as to form one uniform body original in its kind, or excellent in any view.58

According to Reynolds, Maratti lacked the flame of intellectual and inventive synthesis that characterized the Grand Style of painting produced by Raphael, Ludovico Carracci, and Guido Reni, whose replicas flanked the Nativity in the Scripture Room. Examples of Maratti’s saccharine style are seen in Linwood’s depiction of the playful cherubs that

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float around Mary and in the affected posture of her right hand. In the Leicester Square gallery, Linwood’s visitors could contrast the trio’s linear Grand Style with the more pedestrian imagery created by Maratti. Once again, Linwood’s rendering of material items was more successful than her depiction of the human figure. The Virgin’s veil, cloak, and gown, as well as the swaddling cloth beneath Christ’s body, appear sculptural in relation to the human faces. Some of Linwood’s visitors to the Leicester Square Gallery walked through the different rooms of the exhibition, studying her replicas after English painters and favorably comparing them to the Italianate replicas in the gallery’s final chamber, the Scripture Room. Those familiar with Reynolds’s Discourses would have understood the Raphael, Carracci, and Reni replicas as examples of the Grand Style. A final motivation for Linwood’s Scripture Room must also be considered: her desire to place her own work within the English textile tradition, not unlike Reynolds’s theoretical engagement with British painting. By the eleventh century, England was renowned for its high-quality embroidery, as embodied by the Bayeux Tapestry. The island nation, rich in wool supply, was the European center of Opus Anglicanum (English work), religious needlework produced before the Reformation. It was produced by both men and women, who created liturgical vestments and church decorations. The Butler-Bowden Cope (Victoria & Albert Museum), which depicts scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary, is a well-known example of the genre. During Linwood’s visits to private art collections, she very well may have had the chance to study examples of Opus Anglicanum.59 The revival of interest in this type of embroidery, however, did not occur until the closing years of the Leicester Square gallery, making it very unlikely that it influenced Linwood’s use of religious replicas or the design of her Scripture Room.60

Conclusion Linwood’s emulation of Reynolds was motivated by both emotional and financial factors. Unable to study at the Royal Academy, she became an unofficial student of his work, a practice that she pursued with other British artists whom she admired, like Gainsborough and Morland. At first, she copied some of Reynolds’s best-known works, including his King Lear, Self-Portrait, and a trio of his fancy pictures, knowing that high-quality copies of his work would bring people to her gallery and demonstrate her own mastery. Linwood’s study of his work also improved her rendering of the human figure, a skill difficult for most women artists to master. For Reynolds, copying also played an important educational role. His access to many painting collections (both public and private) undoubtedly contributed to the type of creative imitation that he suggested in his second discourse. One can see his rivalry with past artists in his Laughing Girl, which was inspired by Rembrandt’s Girl at a Window. In contrast, Linwood’s replicas of paintings by Reynolds and others are much more like their prototypes. Linwood’s ingenuity was instead expressed in the installation of her replicas and the illusionistic depiction of textiles within her embroidered copies.

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Linwood’s engagement with Reynolds’s theories, particularly those relating to the Grand Style, was also on display in her exhibition spaces. Although the evidence surrounding whether the two artists ever met remains piecemeal, her replication of his work points to a knowledge of his artistic hierarchies. The Scripture Room in the Leicester Square space, which featured religious imagery not seen elsewhere in Linwood’s oeuvre, allowed her to explore some of Reynolds’s arguments about the Grand Style and the painting of Raphael, Reni, and Ludovico Carracci. Furthermore, in the Scripture Room, Linwood’s visitors could readily equate modern British and Continental art, also one of Reynolds’ ultimate objectives. This equivalence was part of the celebration of British identity and empire building seen in the Leicester Square gallery’s Gothic Room and Dens. Like Reynolds, Linwood was both teacher and artist, passing her knowledge on to subsequent generations of students. In an 1821 article in La Belle Assemblée, for example, the author framed his/her praise in pedagogical language, writing that “the beauties of the original picture were evidently not only carefully studied by Miss Linwood, but well understood, and the mechanical dexterity with which the truth of the finest pictorial effects are produced, is most extraordinary.”61 Linwood’s interrelated roles as educator and entrepreneur, one natural and one learned, helped both her London and Leicester businesses flourish for over thirty-five years. The money that she earned in London allowed her to support a younger generation of artists and writers from Leicester, an example of her cultural patriotism expressed on a more local level. This group, discussed in the following chapter, remains one of Linwood’s forgotten legacies.

6

Linwood’s Legacies

In 1825, Linwood turned seventy, well surpassing the then-average life expectancy in the UK of 40.46 years.1 Nonetheless, Linwood continued to work at her interrelated jobs at the London gallery and the Leicester boarding school. Linwood’s success in London enriched her professional and social network both there and in Leicester, facilitating both her philanthropy and mentorship of former students, local artists, and authors. These activities were a logical extension of the cultural patriotism and educational goals that characterized her London gallery, for they encouraged a celebration of local cultural sites and landscapes. Despite Linwood’s best attempts to attract people to the Leicester Square gallery, it faded in popularity in the last decade of her life (1835–45). Its decline coincided with the demise of the Leicester boarding school, her own deteriorating health, and a crushing legal ruling brought against Linwood and her original co-lessees. In the face of these challenges, Linwood tried to ensure her role as a supporter of British art and culture through various bequests and legacies. Yet changing entertainment, embroidery tastes, and technological innovations in the textile field contributed to the demise of her reputation on both national and local levels.

The Priory and Linwood’s Students As a teenager, Linwood began her professional career as a teacher at the Priory, and that pedagogical drive remained an important part of her subsequent exhibitions, where her visitors were introduced to a contemporary group of British painters. The two jobs were mutually supportive financially. Ticket revenue from the Leicester Square Gallery funded the upkeep of and renovations to the Priory, whose facade was adorned with architectural details such as a crenelated roof and rustication.2 These historicizing features, coupled with mullioned glass windows, resembled the facade of stately homes, adding to its visual appeal. Pupils entered the school through a door that resembled a medieval portcullis, a detail that was also part of the threshold of the Leicester Square Gallery’s Gothic Room. A c. 1840 lithograph by an unknown artist, possibly Linwood’s former student Frances “Fanny” Bond Palmer (1812–76), reflects further changes to the Priory’s façade (Figure 6.1). The city of Leicester doubled in size in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, and Linwood strove to attract wealthy students with these architectural renovations.3

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Figure 6.1  Priory Façade, 1845, Fanny Bond Palmer (?), Leicester Museums and Galleries.

As Linwood aged and fewer visitors came to her London Leicester Square gallery, she spent an increasing amount of time in her hometown, where her artistic, educational, and philanthropic endeavors benefited her native city and province. Her embroidery continued to bring her social and economic success in Leicester. There she formed friendships with socially prominent figures, hoping to attract their daughters to the Priory, which she began to advertise as a school for Nobility and Gentry in local directories.4 Linwood and her friends often auctioned their embroidery to benefit local philanthropic causes, like the Leicester Infirmary and Lunatic Asylum and the Association of Ladies for the Relief of the Poor.5 In September of 1838, Linwood and other townswomen held a sale of their embroidery to fund the construction of Christ Church in her hometown.6 Linwood asked Queen Adelaide (1792–1849), the wife of King William IV of England, and a gifted embroiderer, to endorse the venture. The queen travelled to Leicester to show her support.7 Three years later, Linwood exhibited some of the London textiles (including the Salvator Mundi) in her hometown to fund renovations to the Leicester Infirmary and raise money for local tradespeople.8 The Leicester Journal praised Linwood’s indefatigable benevolence, which it believed “would be long cherished in the minds of the Inhabitants of this Town and County.”9,10 Linwood’s students were also expected to follow their teacher’s altruistic lead by  attending and donating to local philanthropic events.11 One of them, Mary Kirby (1817–93), recounted her teacher’s sponsorship of a local charitable ball. The “very much admired” Linwood opened the event wearing a wig of jet-black curls, a

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Figure 6.2  Mary Linwood, 1826, Mary Linwood, Linwood Scrapbook, Leicester Museums and Galleries.

description in line with Linwood’s 1826 self-portrait from her scrapbook (Figure 6.2).12 Seen in profile, Linwood wears a simple bonnet and modest dress of a schoolteacher, an image of staid respectability that would have also attracted students to the Priory. In addition to Kirby and Palmer, Linwood played an integral role in the education of Leicester topographical artist and lithographer John Flower (1793–1861), who later became well-known for his celebration of local landmarks. Her engagement with his work reveals an elastic approach toward replication also seen in her embroidered replicas. For Linwood, as with many teachers, education was a two-way street, for she both taught and learned from her students and charges. Teaching and advising the group, along with her philanthropic activities, were fundamental to ensuring her posthumous local reputation and cultural legacy. Linwood’s regional commemoration was wisely and widely imitated by her most successful protégés, linking them to their famous teacher and simultaneously appealing to their local customer base. Their creative success continued to bring their mentor accolades and professional recognition well beyond her death in 1845.

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Because Linwood’s students were able to study her extensive collection of prints and drawings at the Priory, it is not surprising that some of them became talented draftsmen and lithographers, a medium that could be quite painterly, not unlike Linwood’s textile copies.13 Leicester native Bond Palmer, one of Linwood’s most successful students, later worked as a lithographer for Nathaniel Currier (the founder of Currier and Ives) for almost twenty years. The Bond family, headed by wealthy solicitor Robert Bond, lived close to the Priory; they knew Linwood from their attendance and philanthropic activities at St. Margaret’s. Fanny and her sister Maria attended the Priory in 1826 and 1827, where they took lessons in drawing, perspective, and watercolor, which provided the foundation for Fanny’s specialization in topographical landscape, a genre essential to the evolution of lithography during her lifetime.14 The instruction very likely came from Linwood, for no records for a separate art teacher exist. Bond Palmer’s instruction at the Priory played a significant role in her later professional development by providing her with a strong female role model. Witnessing Linwood’s work in two cities certainly inspired Bond to simultaneously pursue several artistic careers. Bond married fellow artist Edmund Seymour Palmer in 1832 and soon after opened a drawing school for girls in Leicester, before moving to London with her husband to study the new medium of lithography. They founded their own lithography business and produced a series of topographical prints, Sketches of Leicestershire (1842), which was praised by a reviewer for a “boldness and freedom not often exhibited by a female pencil.”15 In late 1843 or early 1844, the couple emigrated to New York, where she again taught painting and drawing. Bond Palmer supplemented the family’s income by designing greeting cards and working as a botanical illustrator, a genre that she was introduced to while at the Priory.16 Another former Linwood student, Mrs. Fulford Brown (maiden name unknown), placed an advertisement in The Baltimore North American and Mercantile Daily Advertiser for her school for young ladies. In the ad, Brown described herself “as a pupil of the celebrated Miss Linwood, whose exhibitions of needle-work in different parts of Europe require no encomiums.”17 The copier was now famous enough to be copied, as Brown clearly hoped that her study with the Leicester embroiderer would attract the best of the city’s families to her school. Like their former teacher, Bond Palmer and Brown were some of the first women to make a living as an artist in their adoptive country. Bond Palmer’s study with Linwood provided her with a role model who fostered artistic skill and experimentation in her students beyond the requisite finishing school skills. Similarly, her work at Currier and Ives also had several things in common with artistic practices at the Priory. Currier often bought or borrowed paintings and drawings that he wanted to replicate. At Currier and Ives, Bond Palmer specialized in local topographical views and rural scenes, subject matter also favored by her former teacher. She produced over 200 lithographs and encouraged Currier to employ the new tint technique that they had learned in London. The technique, which involved the use of multiple stones, resembled a watercolor wash, blurring the lines between artistic genres, as Linwood’s embroidered copies did.18 Topographical artist John Flower (1793–1861), later known as “The Leicester Artist,” also profited from Linwood’s artistic experience, patronage, and celebration of local scenery.19 In 1816, Linwood paid London artist Peter de Wint (1784–1849) to give

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art lessons to Flower; it is unclear whether gender or a busy schedule kept her from teaching him herself.20 De Wint, a landscape painter, was married to Linwood’s former student Harriet Hilton, who came from a family of artists and attended the Priory in the opening years of the nineteenth century.21 Linwood’s letters to de Wint reveal her nuanced understanding of draftsmanship, a skill that she imparted to her students and relied on for the creation of some of her own replicas. She wrote, “Flower is entirely self-taught and does not profess to understand either penciling or colouring … I have persuaded him to take specimens of his efforts, to shew you what he does attempt, and not to fear to shew all his faults to you—which he will do, with humble hope of your correcting hand.”22 Flower studied and lived with De Wint for about a year free of charge. He returned to Leicester in 1817, where he established himself as a landscape artist, lithographer, and drawing teacher.23 Linwood later acquired several watercolor scenes by De Wint, perhaps in gratitude for his assistance to the younger artist.24 Flower achieved success in his hometown with the 1826 publication of Views of Ancient Buildings in the Town and Country of Leicester. A gifted lithographer, his twenty-five images document the region’s changing appearance in the early nineteenth century. They also display an eye for local Roman and medieval architecture, a preference Linwood shared. Flower’s depiction of the Mitre and Key Inn, for example, captures the architectural mélange of this pub built in a section of town originally settled by the Romans (Figure 6.3). In 1826, Linwood made three watercolor copies from Flower’s publication: views of the West Bridge, Roman Milestone, and Mitre and Key Inn, and pasted them into her scrapbook. She signed the almost identical copies with her own name, an action that mimicked her embroidery practice (Figure 6.4). Leicester native Mary Kirby also celebrated local scenery, later becoming a wellknown botanical artist and writer. From a textile manufacturing family, Kirby and her

Figure 6.3  Mitre & Keys Inn, c. 1830, John Flower, British Museum.

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Figure 6.4  Mitre & Keys Inn, c. 1830, Mary Linwood, replica after John Flower, Linwood Scrapbook, Leicester Museums and Galleries.

sister Sarah studied at the Priory in the mid-1830s.25 She and her sisters were forced to earn a living following the 1848 death of her father John Kirby. Like Linwood, Mary Kirby found artistic inspiration in the local scenery. With the help of another sister, Elizabeth, she published A Flora of Leicestershire in 1850, a pioneering study of 939 land plants. Mary created images that reflected her botanical and avian knowledge, as well as the draftsmanship that she had gleaned from her teacher’s collection of prints and drawings.26 Kirby’s brief autobiography, written late in her life, provides a rare account of Linwood in her later years. In it, she recounted seeing her teacher, whose eyesight was failing, embroidering at the Priory.27 According to Kirby, Linwood wore two sets of spectacles and employed her young students to thread her needles. When Kirby visited the London exhibition in the mid-1830s, she thought it resembled a museum, for the textiles were separated from visitors by a mahogany balustrade. She found it hard to believe that the images had been made with a needle. She singled out the Salvator Mundi as particularly fine.28 Kirby’s publication, then, provides the only eyewitness description of both Linwood’s school and the Leicester Square Gallery in its twilight years.

The Demise of the Leicester Square Gallery Linwood’s gallery, which had once been a novelty, was passé by the 1830s. In the Leicester Square neighborhood, the gallery was superseded by more popular tourist attractions such as shooting galleries, automatons, panoramas, tableaux vivants, and wax statues.

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For example, in 1835, entrepreneur Marie Tussaud opened her wax museum on nearby Baker Street. Like Linwood’s venue, these enterprises offered a unique blend of fine art and popular entertainment. Their newness and use of technology, however, made them a compelling alternative to Linwood’s exhibition, whose woolen decoration seemed old-fashioned. During the decade, Linwood made several changes to the Leicester Square Gallery to increase attendance. She lowered her ticket price from two shillings to one and moved some of her most popular replicas (Stubbs’s Tygress and Gainsborough’s Woodman) to the first room of the venue.29 She finished her final replica, a copy of a large painting by Jean Baptiste Paulin Guérin (1783–1855), The Judgment Upon Cain, which she also hung in this chamber.30 Linwood also added a sixth Gainsborough replica of a landscape to the collection. Her advertisements described the former as a “Grand Colossean (sic) Tableau,” phrasing that aspires to the realm of history painting.31 During her visit to the gallery, Queen Adelaide pronounced the Guérin replica “a production most awfully grand and sublime.”32 Linwood hoped that the addition of the Guérin and Gainsborough textiles, coupled with a re-organization of the Leicester Square Gallery, would attract visitors back to her venue. Her London advertisements continued to promote her celebration of British art, stating that their “numerous selections [are] exquisitely wrought from the best of the English school.”33 In the 1830s, Linwood’s changes to the gallery attracted several high-profile visitors, like Queen Adelaide and North American statesman Daniel Webster (1782–1852), but her efforts to revive the popularity of her exhibition were ultimately unsuccessful.34 Linwood’s changes to the gallery freed up space at 5–6 Savile House for new co-lessors whose business ventures signaled the changing character of the Leicester Square neighborhood. In 1836, Green’s Shooting Gallery and Gun and Pistol Repository took over the top two floors of the building (see Figure  4.2).35 A contemporaneous image of the building depicts the new and perhaps surprising configuration of tenants. Remarkably, Linwood’s name is seen three times above the entrance to her gallery, perhaps part of a last-ditch advertising effort. Like the gallery, the Leicester Square neighborhood had also seen better days. In The Shows of London, Richard Altick wrote of the area: “the decline of the neighborhood had already begun, and by the forties the square itself, its railings long since removed for firewood, had become one of the ugliest eyesores in London.”36 William Makepeace Thackeray and Charles Dickens also viewed their Leicester Square Gallery visits (made during the late 1830s) with disdain. In 1856, Thackeray wrote that “the children of the present generation should thank their stars THAT tragedy is put out of the way,” a comment that clearly conveys the gallery’s obsolescence.37 Similarly, although Piggotty visits the Linwood Gallery in David Copperfield (1850), Dickens described it as a “gloomy sepulchre of needlework dropping to pieces with dust and age” and “a mausoleum of needlework, favorable to self-examination and repentance.”38 Despite these comments, Linwood’s role as a master embroiderer was recognized in the final years of her life in several fundamental volumes on embroidery: The Art of Needlework: From the Earliest Ages: Including Some Notices of the Ancient Historical Tapestries (1841) and The Ladies’ Work-table Book: Containing Clear and Practical Instructions in Plain and Fancy Needlework, Embroidery, Knitting, Netting, and Crochet. With Numerous Engravings (1845).39

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The 1830s brought an additional disappointment to Linwood, as she lost a lawsuit instigated by Samuel Page, the architect and builder who had underseen the renovations to the Leicester Square Gallery in the first decade of the nineteenth century. According to the lawsuit, Page had not received his full payment from the building owner Thomas Willows and the building’s co-lessees Linwood and John and Herbert Broom.40 Following the 1813 and 1815 deaths of Willows and Herbert Broom, Page decided to sue the surviving lessees and their heirs for compensation. The case made its way through several chancery courts in London, with the final decision issued in 1837. It compelled Linwood to pay one-third of the original renovation expenses of £13,290. Shortly thereafter, Linwood finalized her will, bequeathing her remaining assets to her family and local charities.41 She closed the Priory and her body slowed down. In September 1844, she collapsed while on a trip to London to check on the Leicester Square Gallery and was transported back to the Priory. In January 1845, she contracted the flu and went into further decline. Her servants carefully moved her to her brother William’s house in Enfield, Middlesex (now north London), where she died on March 2, 1845, four months shy of her ninetieth birthday.

Memorializing Linwood Linwood’s lifelong artistic, educational, and philanthropic endeavors in Leicester ensured her local reputation in the days and weeks following her death. Her local philanthropy was often mentioned in her obituaries. The Morning Post, for example, wrote that upon her passing, “[M]any poor families will miss the hand of succor, her benevolence of disposition having led her to minister of her substance to the necessities of the poor and destitute in her neighbourhood.”42 Many of the tradespeople’s shops were closed on the day of Linwood’s funeral, March 11, so that they could take part in the procession, a poignant tribute to their local benefactor.43 St. Margaret’s, the church Linwood frequently attended, was the site of the funeral and now houses two memorials to her—one on the floor and one on the wall.44 Her burial spot there is easy to miss, for the inscription “ML 1845” is worn down from years of foot traffic in the church’s south aisle (Figure 6.5). On a nearby wall, a plaque summarizes Linwood’s artistic, cultural, and philanthropic achievements. It reads Sacred to the memory of Mary Linwood Whose genius has shed a light on Her age, her country, and her sex and Whose works are a splendid monument of art and perseverance. In calm and grateful resignation, she closed a life of unwearied activity and benevolence On the 2nd day of March, 1845 In the ninetieth year of her age.45

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Figure  6.5 Mary Linwood Burial Marker, St. Margaret’s, Leicester, 1845, Collection of Author.

These lines praise Linwood’s fame, industry, intelligence, and celebration of England and its art. They also commemorate her artistic and philanthropic accomplishments, activities that she deftly balanced for almost half a century. Written tributes to Linwood after her death often used pastoral metaphors to describe her long and productive life. A poem in the Leicester Journal published in early April 1845 lauded Linwood’s artistic skill, full life, and patriotic talent: As magical as are cut the golden sheaves In plenteous harvest, after autumn’s morning. So human growth the sickle Time receives, The heart rejoices, or the spirit grieves, Its own existence clouding or adorning:Nature hath giv’n thee fulness [sic], ripeness, years, Almost a century’s life of bliss and blessing …. Rare sempstress! Most the needle’s art possessing Unrivall’d, unsurpass’d, rich paintress, giving Splendid examples of pictorial skill ….. Thy handiworks [will live] On history’s British wall suspended, shining.46

This autumnal imagery points to Linwood’s favorite subject matter, seen in the many replicas after landscape painters (such as Gainsborough, Morland, and Wilson) who were likewise renowned for their celebration of the increasingly disappearing English

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landscape. The seasonal metaphor surely also referred to the end of her long life, an interpretation reinforced by the line “so human growth the sickle Time receives.” The phrases “rare semptress [seamstress],” “the needle’s art,” “rich paintress,” and “pictorial skill” all denote the elision between painting and textile in her work. Finally, the poem speaks to her promising legacy: that her replicas, hung on “history’s British wall,” would continue her fame after her death. Following Linwood’s burial, her possessions were dispersed in two separate sales in Leicester and London in 1845 and 1846. In her hometown, local auctioneers B. Payne and Son held a four-day sale at the Priory between June 3 and 6, 1845. According to Payne and Son’s thirty-one-page inventory of her home, Linwood’s most valuable possessions included her art collection, a pair of diamond earrings, a costly diamond pendant, a large number of rare gold, silver, and copper medals, and an iron fourpost bedstead whose former owner was supposedly Oliver Cromwell.47 Linwood’s books, paintings, and prints were auctioned on the final day of the sale.48 The Leicester auction, coupled with the sale of the Priory, yielded £45,000, roughly £5,199,822 ($5,460,000) today, an astonishing amount for the daughter of a schoolteacher and linen draper.49 Linwood’s Leicester art collection reflected her role as a knowledgeable connoisseur, gifted draftsperson, and champion of British culture. Listed on the final four pages of the Priory inventory, the collection is organized into seven multiitem portfolios containing works on paper and fifty-three paintings. Some of these prints and paintings clearly served as prototypes for her textile copies. For example, her replica of Wright of Derby’s Cottage on Fire was based on a painting that she purchased from the artist. She also owned twenty-nine prints of Gainsborough’s Boy at the Fire and thirty prints of Cottage Girl; embroidered replicas of these hung in the Leicester Square gallery. The sheer number of these suggests that they were used to teach students at the Priory. In the portfolios, scenes from the Lake District and Wales far outnumber European locales, reflecting Linwood’s own travel and cultural patriotism. The contents of Linwood’s own artistic collection paralleled the imagery in her London gallery in several ways. For example, her portfolios were dominated by the work of British artists and rural subject matter, a reflection of her cultural patriotism. Forty-eight of her fifty-three paintings were produced by British artists (including herself).50 She owned images by British landscape specialists Samuel Prout (1783– 1852) and George Harley (1791–1871), both of whom were renowned teachers of watercolor and lithography. Linwood’s acquisition of their work surely aided in her own training, as well as that of her students, like Bond Palmer and Flower. Most of the watercolors produced by Linwood’s own hand are landscapes, the most popular genre in the Leicester Square gallery.51 This was also popular subject matter in her scrapbook, which is filled with her watercolor sketches of cows, foxes, pigs, and dogs, imagery inspired by the rural areas of her native Leicestershire. The pastoral images that surrounded Linwood in her private space, then, echoed the subject matter seen in the Leicester Square gallery, tangible reminders of the cultural patriotism that shaped her public identity.

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Linwood’s Will Linwood’s will was similarly aligned with the educational goals and cultural patriotism embodied in her art collection and in her London gallery. Following the terms of her will, the gallery stayed open for six months following her death. Linwood clearly hoped that her textiles (with one exception, the Salvator Mundi) would stay together so that they could continue to educate people about British art.52 If this didn’t happen, Linwood specified that the proceeds of their sale should go to her heirs. No buyer for the entire collection was found and Christie’s auctioned the textiles on April 23, 1846, in the Leicester Square Gallery. Forty-six (roughly three-quarters) of the textiles went to antiques dealers who were particularly interested in the smaller, cheaper replicas. Except for the very popular Woodman in a Storm (after Gainsborough), Linwood’s large and more expensive replicas did not sell well.53 In stark contrast with the Leicester auction, the Christie’s sale garnered a disappointing £300, an indicator of Linwood’s declining reputation.54 Linwood’s posthumous fame lingered longer on a regional level than a national one, thanks in part to her will. Individual bequests in it honored family members, servants, and local charities. Some of the unsold textiles from the Christie’s sale passed to them. Her brother William (at whose house she died) was allowed to select four paintings and/or textiles from Linwood’s collection. Niece Ellen Markland received a replica of the Napoleon portrait and the Hoppner oil portrait of her aunt. Linwood’s executor and lawyer George Bellairs, who was married to her niece Emma, received £150. Two of her favorite nephews, Bertie and Whalley Markland, were each bequeathed £50. Long-time servants Anne Clast and Mary Yarborrow also received this amount.55 The Leicester Infirmary, a lifelong recipient of Linwood’s support, was given £100.56 The rest of Linwood’s £45,000 estate was divided between Bertie, Whalley, Ellen, and their fourteen cousins. Her hometown honored her commitment to education when it opened the Mary Linwood Comprehensive School for Girls, which was in operation until 1997. Very little is known about this school and its foundation.57 In Linwood’s will, she named only one work specifically: Salvator Mundi. Her plans for it were guided by her cultural patriotism and educational goals. It was to be given to the reigning monarch of the UK (who was Queen Victoria at the time of Linwood’s death) as “an heirloom to the crown to behold and enjoy.”58 This act acknowledged the royal support that Linwood had received for decades, beginning with Queen Charlotte and continuing with her daughter-in-law, Adelaide, who singled out the textile for praise during her 1831 visit to the Leicester Square Gallery.59 There is no record of her granddaughter Queen Victoria’s response to the gift, despite its importance to the donor. Its infrequent exhibition in the Royal Residences would have perhaps frustrated Linwood, but that has kept the textile in extraordinarily good condition. The textile’s afterlife in the Royal Collection ensured its preservation but not Linwood’s place in the London art world, as she had hoped.

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Technological and Aesthetic Changes Technological innovations in the textile field and evolving artistic tastes contributed to the devaluation of Linwood’s achievements. The inventions of machine embroidery and sewing machines and the accelerated use of synthetic dye made her work seem old-fashioned, as Thackeray and Dickens described. The machines, invented in 1828 and 1844 respectively, created identical embroidery stitches, the antithesis of Linwood’s needlework, which featured stitches of varying lengths to create a painterly effect. Both machines produced stitches in a short amount of time, in contrast to Linwood’s individualistic and labor-intensive needlework.60 Additionally, the use of synthetically dyed thread became popular in the 1850s when its factory manufacture led to inexpensive production costs. Synthetic (aniline) dye had several additional advantages over the dye that Linwood used for her wool. It produced a thread with more consistent color saturation and was more resilient to light damage than the natural dye.61 For women working with embroidery kits, the color saturation led to even more homogeneousness end products, regardless of the embroiderer. By the 1840s, embroidery was an increasingly commercialized and standardized venture, the antithesis of Linwood’s idiosyncratic style. Berlin wool work (now known as needlework) became popular with middle—and upper-class women, who could readily afford the mass-produced kits, which included synthetically dyed woolen threads. The kits usually featured a uniform tent (diagonal) stitch and printed charts, and imprinted canvases further guided embroiderers’ hands.62 Women’s periodicals often reproduced embroidery patterns based on popular painters: Queen Victoria’s animal painter Edwin Landseer (1802–73) was a favorite, for his subject matter was quintessentially English.63 In needlework, an aesthetic of uniformity reigned, the opposite of the variety of stitches and layers in Linwood’s replicas. The commercialization of embroidery, along with other types of accomplishment art, contributed to an increasingly negative view of amateur art.64 As more women could afford to purchase them, the cultural value of needlework as a feminine activity decreased, as it was no longer a signifier of upper-class wealth and leisure time. Berlin wool work was highlighted at the Great Exhibition of 1851, which accelerated its widespread adoption by English embroiderers. Like many of the items at this exposition, this type of needlework seemed novel and forward-looking in its mechanization, unlike Linwood’s passé (and manual) practice. A large example of Berlin wool work, the Ladies Carpet, was presented to Queen Victoria on the exhibition’s opening day. The textile, inspired by Turkish rugs and made of identical stiches, was produced by 150 women working from a printed pattern designed by architect and antiquary John Papworth. The embroiderers had been encouraged to produce a textile “that would equal the looms of the Continent,” a phrase reminiscent of Linwood’s cultural patriotism.65 In Henry Courtney Selous’s depiction of opening day (Victoria & Albert Museum), the queen, Prince Albert, and their family stand on a green rug while the Ladies Carpet unfurls before them.66 Its regimented precision echoed the standardized industrial processes celebrated at the Exhibition. Berlin wool

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work eventually became so widespread in the nineteenth century that it was conflated with the more innovative embroidery of Linwood and fellow late eighteenth-century embroiderers Mary Delany and Mary Knowles.67

William Morris and Art Embroidery By the 1860s, a new style of needlework, Art Embroidery, became popular in England. Popularized by William Morris (1834–96), it embraced the use of a variety of stitches, like Linwood’s oeuvre. Morris learned his needlework skills by picking apart medieval embroidery, an act that appears to have conflicted with his professionalization of the field. In 1861, he established Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. (later Morris & Co.), a furnishings firm and retailer that embraced a medieval aesthetic, particularly in the textile field. Morris and his fellow members of the Arts and Crafts movement advocated a return to the manual production of art as an escape from the era of industrialization. They believed that the standardization of embroidery, as symbolized by mass-produced embroidery kits and mechanized sewing was destroying the country’s native needlework tradition.68 The rise of Art Embroidery occurred less than twenty years after Linwood’s death, which indicates that even in the oft-feminized field of textiles, the gendering of art history and its terminology was on Morris’s side. Morris often described himself as a designer and producer rather than an embroiderer even though he too relied heavily on the replication process.69 By naming himself as such, he helped to control the art historical narrative, especially in relation to a medium traditionally gendered as feminine. While Linwood relied more on the replication of paintings than Morris and his followers, it is important to stress that the latter group frequently turned to English embroidery created between 1300 and 1800 as models for their work. They were particularly drawn to the Gothic style, an era that they considered quintessentially English, in comparison to the Italianate Classical and Renaissance periods.70 For them, Gothic needlework, embodied by the highly valued Opus Anglicanum, was an expression of cultural patriotism, as modern British painting had been for Linwood. Unlike her embroidery, the textiles produced by Morris and his colleagues were less naturalistic. Morris, along with fellow revivalists Augustus Pugin and Owen Jones, favored a style devoid of modeling, for they saw flatness of design as a symbol of modernity. Although many of Morris’s best-known designs (such as Acanthus and Strawberry Thief) were inspired by nature, they were rendered in a stylized, antiillusionistic way that harkened back nostalgically to the Medieval era. Morris warned that one should never use shadow, and his daughter May seemed to be speaking explicitly about Linwood’s style when she wrote that this facility of “painting” with the needle is in itself a danger, for it tempts some people to produce a highly shaded imitation of a picture, an attempt which must be a failure both as a decorative and as a pictorial achievement. It cannot be said too often that the essential qualities of all good needlework are a broad surface, bold lines and pure, brilliant and, as a rule, simple colouring.71

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To Morris and his disciples, the naturalism of Linwood’s textiles was woefully ­old— fashioned, particularly in comparison to his work and those textiles produced by his colleagues Walter Crane and Edward Burne-Jones. Timing was also on Morris’s side, for his nationalistic celebration of handiwork occurred after the first blush of the sewing machine’s popularity had worn off once people realized the limitations of mechanized needlework. Like Linwood, he was a successful entrepreneur and educator, but his gender allowed him more opportunities than she had enjoyed. For example, his place within the popular Arts and Crafts movement provided him with a national platform that facilitated the lengthy success of his embroidery practice, for it was clearly aligned with progressive political and social values. In his lecture on Art and Socialism (1884), Morris spoke of historical periods (such as the Medieval era) in which art was superior to commerce, for the latter field had “divided England into two peoples, living street by street and door by door, people of the same blood.”72 Machinery had removed the soul from labor; this theft could be countered by the return and practice of art in daily life. He declared himself an advocate of the working classes, joining the socialist movement in 1882 and penning The Manifesto to the Working Men of England.73 He traveled throughout England, spreading the gospels of the democratization of art and the dignity of the working classes. At Morris & Co, he advocated principles before profit and paid his employees above average. Under the leadership of his daughter May, the embroidery department at Morris & Co. created inexpensive embroidery kits that ensured that art could be made in every home.74 They celebrated the chivalry of daily handwork as a reaction to the industrialist movement, ultimately transforming a nostalgic yearning for a pre-industrial era into a successful business model. Arts & Crafts embroiderer Mary E. Turner (1854–1907) wrote, “the hand-worked embroidery glorified and gave value to the material it was worked on. The machine-work cannot lift it above the commonplace.”75 Morris’s advisory role and creative work for the London-based South Kensington Museum and the Royal School of Art Needlework ensured that he played a key part in the golden age of embroidery study and scholarship. This period began in 1852, only seven years after Linwood’s death, with the establishment of the South Kensington Museum (now known as the Victoria & Albert). The display of textiles in this setting was an important step for their treatment as art historical objects.76 Most of the museum’s early collection was comprised of Opus Anglicanum, one of Morris’s favorite needlework styles. The South Kensington Museum sought his advice on which items to purchase, which meant that he played a key role in establishing the parameters of historical embroidery and its canon.77 In 1872, the Royal School of Art Needlework (RSAN) was established with the help of Queen Victoria’s daughter, Princess Helena, who became the school’s first president.78 The RSAN was founded to provide an income for impoverished gentlewomen, a charge that continued the historical association between embroidery and the upper classes. Its founders also wanted to elevate the standing of embroidery by encouraging a more systematic investigation of it, like the endeavors of the South Kensington Museum. Morris, Crane, and Burne-Jones were encouraged to create embroidery designs for the school. The RSAN ultimately used over 100 of their

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patterns, again insuring Morris’s key role in the historicizing movement, its male designers, and the professionalization of embroiderers.79 Morris’s Art Embroidery remains highly valued today, in part because of the gendering of art history, even in the feminized field of textiles. As a champion of “women’s work,” Morris enjoyed the lengthy success that eluded Linwood, even though her embroidery, like his, was nostalgic in nature. His reputation was in large part cemented by the fact that his designs were ultimately commercialized and massproduced, despite his adherence to the medieval workshop production model. While some of his designs were original, others were copies, yet he is often categorized as a designer. Some of Linwood’s textiles were also original designs, but that detail has escaped all historical accounts of her life until now. Such terminology reinforces Sherry Ortner’s observation that “female is to male as nature is to culture,” for women are best at copying while men excel at original design.80 Linwood’s gender and its reproductive capacity contributed to her categorization as a copyist, despite the fact she, like Morris, was also an artist, author, teacher, philanthropist, and entrepreneur. As recently as the 2014 Folk Art exhibition in London, she was labeled a kitschy copyist, even though she was a trailblazer in her ownership of a London galley that highlighted English art. Privileged by his gender, Morris became part of the art historical canon as the leader of a progressive cultural movement that has become synonymous with Art Needlework. Although Morris often relied on historical imagery, his flat and anti-naturalistic style was initially seen as modern and new, one of the factors that ensured the movement’s lengthy success. Nostalgia, however, is a shifting and paradoxical terrain, and art history has an ambivalent relationship to it, as the careers of Linwood and Morris demonstrate. As Elizabeth Mansfield has argued, art history’s origins in the Enlightenment have often encouraged the discipline to privilege the new over the old-fashioned.81 Linwood’s gallery was a new and innovative tourist spot in 1809 thanks to her modification of gallery spaces and conversion of paintings into textile form. But despite her best efforts  to bring people to the gallery, the transformative novelty of the gallery faded as she aged. By the 1840s, the naturalism at the core of her style was also no longer novel, for other modern inventions like the camera could also capture it. In the same decade, other technological innovations such as synthetic dyes and the sewing machine became new symbols of modernity, until their limitations were realized and spurned by the Arts & Crafts movement. Even Morris & Co.’s style was eventually seen as oldfashioned by the second decade of the twentieth century for its continued embrace of a medieval aesthetic. It was also hampered by its connections to socialism and the rise of other producers of high-quality needlework, such as the Leek Embroidery Society in Staffordshire, the Liberty Department Store in London, and the Glasgow School of Art.82 Fortuitous timing, a forward-thinking political ideology, and a network of wellconnected friends aided the flourishing of Morris’s career. So did his gender and institutional affiliations, which insured him a key spot in the art historical canon and the study of textiles. Fifty years ago, Linda Nochlin set the stage for the rediscovery of some women artists by questioning the parameters of the canon and its enablers, elite cultural organizations, in her essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women

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Artists?” She importantly identified the systemic social, cultural, political, and racial barriers that kept women outside of the story of art history. The essay, however, reinforced art history’s methodological focus on institutional affiliation as the main way to professional success. This message of exclusion is also at the core of Zoffany’s Royal Academicians in General Assembly (1771–2), a painting that has been used far too many times to tell the story of gender and Georgian art history. In both Nochlin’s essay and the painting, protagonists are the outliers, or unusual women who earned academic success, like Gentileschi, Kauffman, Moser, Vigeé-LeBrun, and Rosa Bonheur. In contrast, the understanding of artists like Linwood and many of her colleagues (male and female) who were active outside of elite cultural institutions remains incomplete. Unfortunately, in relation to female artists and other underrepresented populations, queries have all too often been “How many?” and “How important?” rather than “Who were they?”83 The practice of counting artists runs the risk of categorizing famous female academicians as exceptions, instead of comprehensively contextualizing their work. Art historians have not consistently questioned the anachronistic definitions and polar use of the terms amateur and professional that have been further perpetuated by canonical art history, mainly in the form of professional academies, poor recordkeeping, teleological museum exhibitions, and survey classes. This terminology has benefited the status quo and its legacy: the mostly male artists like Reynolds, Morris, and many others affiliated with powerful artistic institutions and the authors who have written about them in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This faulty categorization is based on a cultural ideal, rather than actual eighteenth-century artistic practice. It is well past the time to utilize a more chronologically accurate definition of professional artistic activity based on sustained public recognition that I have suggested in my analysis of Linwood’s oeuvre. Her tenure and financial success were extraordinary, but her professional activity was not, for she was one of many women who supported themselves as artistic professionals in London during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Finally, if the discipline of art history is to remain relevant in the twenty-first century, the limitations and dangers of artistic categorization must be more fully recognized. In “Unmaking Art History,” Donald Preziosi writes that “despite its modern academic reifications and professional commodifications, art history has always been a deponent practice, one of a series of allomorphic fields.”84 Thus, the richness of art history is its compound nature, one that consists of several fields and unstable categories with permeable borders and boundaries. Linwood’s unique practice embodied that interstitiality and transformation, for it incorporated the professional and amateur, artistic and entrepreneurial, in a gallery that celebrated a modern school of British art while pushing the boundaries between theater, painting, architecture, sculpture, and needlework.

Catalogue of Linwood’s Textiles

The following entries contain information on the iconography, visual sources, textual references, and current location of each of Linwood’s textiles. Descriptions of her lost textiles are also included in the following pages. If an artist is included in Linwood’s Biographical Sketches, that information is part of the textile’s catalogue entry.

After Thomas Barker of Bath Woodman Location unknown Debut: 1798 (Hanover Square) Based on one of several depictions of this subject matter by Thomas Barker of Bath (1769–1847), a Welsh painter of landscape and rural life. The life-sized painting was purchased by Macklin for his gallery, where Linwood very likely saw and sketched it. For a general idea of the textile’s appearance, the reader could consult The Woodman and His Dog in a Storm, 1789 (Tate Britain). The dimensions of the original painting are 93 inches (236 cm) by 58.5 inches (148.6 cm). During his lifetime, Barker regularly exhibited at the Royal Academy and British Institution. Gainsborough’s Woodman (which Linwood also copied) influenced Barker’s depiction. Linwood’s replica of Barker’s painting was displayed in the first room of the Leicester Square gallery. Her catalogue entry for it included verses from Cowper’s Task, which she owned.1 Literature: Hedquist, “How a Lost Painting Endured.”

After John Daniel Bond Landscape in Colours, in which Pastoral Figures Are Introduced Location unknown Debut: 1787, only exhibited at the Pantheon Bond (1725–1803) was an English landscape painter and the first of the Birmingham School of landscape artists. His style resembled that of Richard Wilson.

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Bond exhibited at the Society of Artists and Free Society of Artists (FSA). He won two awards at the FSA for his landscape painting. He was apprenticed to Henry Clay, an entrepreneur who introduced the decorative art of japanning to Birmingham in the early 1750s. He then supervised the ornamental department of Boulton’s Soho Manufactory, which is likely how he came to Linwood’s attention.

After John Boultbee Horse and Dog (Figure C.1) Leicester Museums and Galleries Signed M. Linwood near right rear hoof Dimensions: 37 x 46”/94 cm x 1.16 m Debut: 1806 (Dublin) Boultbee (1753–1812), who was born in Osgathorpe, Leicestershire, specialized in images of horses, dogs, cattle, and sheep. Because of this subject matter, his work is frequently attributed to Stubbs or Sawrey Gilpin. John and his twin brother Thomas, also an artist, exhibited at the Royal Academy and the Free Society of Artists between 1775 and 1785; they may have studied with Sir Joshua Reynolds. George III commissioned several equestrian paintings from John; his other patrons were sportsmen. The exact prototype for Linwood’s textile has not yet been identified. Based on the size of the textile, the model was likely a painting in a private collection, perhaps in their shared Leicestershire. The textile, which features a thoroughbred racehorse or hunter with crouching dog, was often hung near her Morland replicas of dogs. In the Biographical Sketches, Boultbee is praised for ability to paint from nature.2

Figure C.1  Horse and Dog, 1806, Mary Linwood, replica after John Boultbee, Leicester Museums and Galleries.

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After Ludovico Carracci Deposition/The Dead Christ Leicester Museums and Galleries Signed M. Linwood beneath Christ’s right hand Dimensions: 37” x 42”/94 cm x 1.06 m Debut: 1809 (Leicester Square) Against a rocky background, Christ’s body is seen on his mother’s lap; John the Evangelist is also present. The textile’s colors retain their brightness, indicating that Linwood’s Deposition was infrequently exhibited. The exact prototype for the textile has not yet been identified. Although Linwood’s catalogues specified Ludovico Carracci as her source, the painting may have been instead produced by several of his well-known family members, fellow artists or one of their many followers. Linwood’s textile shares some features with a Lamentation now in the Hermitage Museum by Annibale’s younger brother Agostino. Linwood also owned an engraving of The Three Marys at the Sepulchre after one of his paintings. Literature: Kenny, McMillan, and Myrone, British Folk Art, 106.

After Charles Catton the Elder Pomeranian Dog (Figure C.2) Leicester Museums and Galleries Signed M. Linwood beneath the dog’s belly Dimensions: 33 x 39”/83 x 99 cm Debut: 1798 (Hanover Square)

Figure C.2  Pomeranian Dog, 1798, Mary Linwood, replica after Charles Catton the Elder, Leicester Museums and Galleries.

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A light brown dog is the focal point of this textile. Tree branches and plants frame the creature. Linwood skillfully recreated the animal’s textured coat by blanketing layers of stitches to create dimensionality. The breed’s characteristic puffy tail and withers are seen here. The exact prototype for the textile has not yet been identified. Charles Catton was a Founding Member of the Royal Academy who served as coach-painter to King George III. Catton was also a gifted landscape, animal, and figure painter. This textile was regularly exhibited in the first room of Linwood’s Leicester Square gallery. In her catalogue entry for the replica, she included lines from William Somerville’s The Chase, poetry that she also used for her Morland copies. In the Biographical Sketches, Catton is described as one who “painted faithful portraits of animals from life, with great effect.”3 Literature: Kenny, McMillan, and Myrone, British Folk Art, 106.

After Richard Cooper Two Landscape Scenes Location unknown (both) Debut: 1810 (Leicester Square) Cooper (1740–1822) served as tutor to the Royal family in the 1790s and is mentioned in the queen’s diary on April 3, 1794.4 Cooper was born in Edinburgh and trained with his father, the engraver Richard Cooper Senior (1701–64). He moved to London in 1761; he was on the Continent between 1771 and 1775. Little is known about these now lost textiles, but they were very likely based on a set of Cooper’s etchings owned by Linwood.5

After Maria Cosway Lodona Location unknown Debut: 1798 (Hanover Square) As Hedquist has demonstrated, the display of Cosway’s Lodona at Macklin’s Gallery of Poets clearly influenced Linwood’s decision to include her replica of the painting in her own exhibition. Pope’s poem commemorates the Treaty of Utrecht, which marked the end of the War of Spanish Succession. Britain was awarded several important land concessions by the French, including Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. The celebration of British military strength would have resonated with Linwood’s visitors; her veneration of Pope’s poem (an excerpt was included in her exhibition catalogues) was part of her larger practice of cultural patriotism.

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Linwood’s inventory lists two prints after Cosway: Lodona and Amanthis. Her replica was very likely created around the same time that Cosway produced her c. 1800 portrait of her friend (private collection). In the Biographical Sketches, Cosway is described as “an Italian lady of great fancy and genius who produced this celebrated and justly admired picture.”6 Literature: Hedquist, “How a Lost Painting Endured,” 260.

After Alexander Cozens Five Landscape Scenes Location unknown (all 5) Debut: 1787 (4 at the Pantheon), 1798 (1 at Hanover Square) At the 1787 exhibition, Linwood debuted four landscapes after Alexander Cozens. At least one more was exhibited at the Hanover Square exhibition. Linwood owned his  New Method of Assisting the Invention of Drawing Original Compositions of Landscape (1785), which suggests that these landscapes were inspired by this volume and the artist’s death the following year. Queen Charlotte, who employed Cozens as a drawing teacher, may have brought the artist to Linwood’s attention. In the catalogue entries for some of the Cozens replicas, Linwood included excerpts from Thomson’s Seasons, one of her favorite poems. In the Biographical Sketches, Cozens was described as “universally admired for his light and shade in bistre drawings, which was admirable, and his compositions from blots, of which he was the inventor.”7

After Carlo Dolci David with His Sling Leicester Museums and Galleries No signature Debut: 1798 (Hanover Square) Dimensions: 39 x 32”/99 x 81 cm In this image, David holds a rope in his left hand while his right arm leans on a large boulder. The hero is dressed in a red hat and cloak, most of which still retains its color. The hands are particularly well done and feature a blend of peach, silver, and white strands. The textile is similar in size to an octagonal canvas now in the Museo Bardini, Florence. The painting’s location between 1700 and 1850 is unknown, which suggests that it might have traveled to England during this period. Complicating this identification, however, is the fact that Sir John Finch (1626–82), English ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, commissioned a variation of this painting from Dolci. In it,

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David’s right hand holds a sword while his left hand rests on Goliath’s head. The second version was in England between 1660 and the early twentieth century, possibly giving Linwood the opportunity to copy it. It was later acquired by the Pinocoteca di Brera.8 Her replica is a sanitized version of the painting, for it does not contain the head of Goliath. This textile was exhibited in the main room of Linwood’s Leicester Square Gallery. Its catalogue entry contains an excerpt from Judges 3:31, which was adapted by Robert Lowth (1710–87), a well-known grammarian and Old Testament scholar. Lowth’s lines accompany several other textiles in Linwood’s catalog. In the Biographical Sketches, Dolci was described as an artist who “rose to a great height of his profession. His pictures were wrought in the most beautiful and delicate style.”9 Tourist John Fiott Lee described this work as “fine and comely. Miss Linwood has done her part well.”10 Salvator Mundi Royal Collection Trust/His Majesty King Charles III 2023 No signature Dimensions: 36.5 x 30”/93.6 x 76.5 cm (including glazed gilt wood frame) Debut: 1798 (Hanover Square) Based on a c. 1650 painting in the collection of Henry Cecil, the 1st Marquess of Exeter (1754–1804). Linwood appears to have created her replica during a 1789 stay at Burleigh House. In this image, Christ looks toward heaven while blessing bread and wine. The painted prototype was quite popular, in part because it featured a Christ whose depiction was more in line with Classical and mostly Western European conceptions of beauty than his Semitic origins would suggest. Dolci was an Italian painter of the Baroque period who was active mainly in Florence and was much admired by Reynolds. Dolci specialized in religious paintings and often repeated the same motifs in various paintings. According to the Biographical Sketches, “the Salvator Mundi [is] considered the finest of his productions.”11 The best-known of Linwood’s replicas, it was the only one mentioned by name in her will.

After Thomas Gainsborough Head of Woodman (in Wool) Location unknown Debut: 1800 (Hanover Square) Between 1799 and 1800, Linwood completed two replicas based on The Woodman, a full-sized textile described below and this one. At Hanover Square, Head of a Woodman acted as a preview for the large Woodman (see the following entry), which was seen in a second room.

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Woodman in a Storm Leicester Museums and Galleries Dimensions: 8’ x 5’6”/2.4 x 1.7 m Debut: 1800 (Hanover Square) When Linwood opened the Leicester Square venue, she placed this replica in the Ruins, an installation situated between the Grove and the Dens. A contemporary visitor described its placement in a sort of “grotesque cottage, surrounded by fir-trees; and the little light introduced, is through what appear like casements, made of canvas that cast a gloomy light on the rustic seat and other accompaniments.”12 The solitary placement of this replica in the Ruins certainly emphasized the fear seen in the faces of the Woodman and his dog as a storm approaches. Linwood used excerpts from Thomson’s Summer to further dramatize their plight. The replica is slightly larger than its prototype, which measured 92 ¾ by 61 ½ inches. Literature: Hedquist, “How a Lost Painting Endured;” Strobel, “Stitching the Stage.” Cottage Children with an Ass Location unknown Debut: 1800 (Hanover Square) The source for this replica was destroyed in an 1809 fire at Exton Hall, along with two other Gainsborough paintings copied by Linwood (Shepherd’s Boy and Woodman in a Storm). This loss likely explains Linwood’s unique signature on another Gainsborough replica, Country Child (Boy with a Cat). Linwood’s scrapbook contains a mezzotint of this image that may have also aided her creation of this replica. Literature: Strobel, “Stitching the Stage.” Children at the Fire Location unknown Debut: 1810 (Leicester Square) In 1810, Linwood installed this replica in the Cottage alongside Country Child (Boy with a Cat). The pair were seen exhibited with various material objects related to the imagery, such as a bowl of porridge, woodpile, and a casement window. Literature: Strobel, “Stitching the Stage.” Country Child (Girl and Cat) Signed: 1809 (left corner) and Gainsborough (right corner) Dimensions: 64 x 53”/1.62 x 1.34 m Debut: 1810 (Leicester Square) The unique signature on this copy likely signifies Linwood’s firsthand study of original Gainsborough paintings in Exton Hall before it was destroyed in 1810. The prototype for this replica, however, was not destroyed and is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Literature: Strobel, “Stitching the Stage.”

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Shepherd’s Boy in a Storm Leicester Museums and Galleries Signed M. Linwood 1800 (right corner) Dimensions: 67 x 57”/1.7 x 1.44 m Debut: 1801 (Hanover Square) In her exhibition catalogues, Linwood appended lines from Book 4 of the Iliad that reinforce the vulnerability of the young boy seen here. The Biographical Sketches contains a lengthy excerpt on Gainsborough that emphasizes the status of Linwood’s copies: “we see five very faithful copies from the most eminent productions of his pencil, amongst which are the Ass and Children, Shepherd’s Boy, and Woodman; THESE are the ONLY EXISTING copies (original emphasis), and are deemed invaluable, the beautiful originals being destroyed by fire in the year 1809.”13 Literature: Strobel, “Stitching the Stage.” Landscape Location unknown Debut: 1830 (Leicester Square) This replica is very likely a Gainsborough replica that Linwood created in the first decade of the nineteenth century but had not exhibited before. Farington’s diary contains several references to her long-term loan of a Gainsborough landscape that belonged to playwright Richard Sheridan. The painting may have been the prototype for Linwood’s seventh replica after the landscape painter; the sale of her work in 1846 contains seven Gainsborough replicas. The replica was hung immediately before the Scripture Room close to Linwood’s other Gainsborough replicas. It was not the only debut work that year, for the embroiderer also unveiled The Judgment Upon Cain after Guérin.

After Jean Baptiste Paulin Guérin The Judgment Upon Cain Location unknown Debut: 1830 (Leicester Square) Guérin, a French history painter and portraitist, began his career as a student of François Gérard and François-André Vincent. His retrograde style harkened back to the Neoclassical period. He was well-known as a portraitist for supporters of the Bourbon restoration. He first exhibited the Judgment Upon Cain at the Salon of 1812, which makes it unlikely that Linwood saw it during her brief trip to France in 1803. Shortly thereafter, the French government purchased the painting for the Musée du Luxembourg. Linwood’s replica was likely based on a copy of the painting that she purchased. One is listed in her 1845 Auction Catalogue.

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In the painting, a semi-nude Cain stands and looks toward the sky. To his right, his wife/sister Awan sits on the ground, holding their two children. It seems possible that this image was tied to abolitionist activity, given its debut in 1830 (the Slavery Abolition Act was passed in England in 1833). British and North American abolitionists often equated the slave trade to the story of Noah’s sons Cain and Abel, stating that “like the crime of Cain, the Slave Trade hath the primal eldest curse upon it.”14 More research remains to be done on Linwood’s abolitionist leanings, but this replica’s chronology and Linwood’s friendship with Leicester abolitionist Elizabeth Heyrick support this supposition. Guérin’s painting measures 41 x 54 inches (104.1 x 137.2 cm). Surviving images of Linwood’s gallery suggest that her replica was similar in size. The catalogue entry for the textile contains excerpts from Genesis 4:9-13. Literature: Craske, “Mary Linwood of Leicester’s Pious Address.”

After Moses Haughton the Elder Hare (Figure C.3) Leicester Museums and Galleries No signature Dimensions: 22 x 18” (27 x 24” with frame)/56 x 45.7 cm Debut: 1787 (Pantheon) Birmingham artist Moses Haughton the Elder (1735–1804) was one of Linwood’s favorite artists. Alternative spellings of his name in her catalogues include Houghton and Horton (for Dead Hare). She replicated his work at least five times and purchased

Figure C.3  Hare, 1787, Mary Linwood, replica after Moses Haughton, Leicester Museums and Galleries.

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at least four of his paintings: Landrails, Pewits, Moor Game, and Hare and Boa Constrictor, upon which this textile was likely based.15 This work features a proximate view of a hare placed somewhat awkwardly in the center of the framed work. Red blood drips from its chest and mouth. The background is very faded, with its border pulling away from the edge of the frame. Kingfisher, Snipe, Curfew, and Woodcock (exhibited as Woodcocks and Kingfisher) (Figure C.4) Leicester Museums and Galleries Signed M. Linwood Dimensions: 15 x 20”/38 x 50 cm Debut: 1798 (Hanover Square) Mechanical paintings based on Houghton’s Dead Game and Birds and Partridges were included in the Polygraphic Society exhibitions of the 1790s. The Society often displayed mechanical paintings alongside their original prototypes. The two original paintings above were owned by Linwood’s friend and mentor Boulton. This suggests that Linwood was able to base her Houghton replicas on firsthand study of the originals and/or high-quality copies (mechanical paintings) of them. Her replica closely resembles Haughton’s A Still Life of a Dead Woodcock and Two Snipe in a Landscape (private collection). Three dead birds lie in a pile in the foreground of the textile near a tree branch. The smallest, a blue and yellow kingfisher, is nestled next to a long-beaked curlew. At least one snipe and perhaps a woodcock (from the same genus, Scolopacidae) are also seen. This image was often exhibited as Woodcocks and Kingfisher with lines from Thomson’s Seasons. Fox Tearing a Cock Location unknown Debut: 1809 (Leicester Square)

Figure C.4  Kingfisher, Snipe, Curlew, and Woodcock, 1798, Mary Linwood, replica after Moses Haughton, Leicester Museums and Galleries.

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Linwood’s inventory lists a Haughton painting of the same title that was very likely the prototype for this textile. Oysters Location unknown Debut: 1787 (Pantheon) Dimensions: 16.5 x 13.5” (approx.)/42 x 34.29 cm This textile was likely based on Lobsters and Oysters, one of the Haughton paintings that Linwood owned. In the entry on Haughton in the Biographical Sketches, he is described as the most excellent in his line—that of dead game, etc. He in general painted from nature, was fond of field sports, of which he frequently partook, and selected, from his day of pleasure, those subjects that formed beautiful groups for his pencil; he retained the fire of genius to his last hour. He also painted the animated nature, and his works are numerous.16

Dead Partridges Private Collection Debut: 1798 (Hanover Square) Dimensions: 24.5 x 28”/62 x 72 cm. Linwood’s illusionistic skill is highlighted in this textile. A single feather drifts down from the two dead birds, whose shadow is subtly suggested by darker thread. This image was exhibited with lines from Thomson’s Seasons.

After Jackson Grapes (c. 1775) (Figure C.5) Leicester Museums and Galleries No signature Dimensions: 36 x 31”/91 x 78 cm Debut: Society of Artists This needlework was produced by Mary and/or her mother Hannah Linwood. In 1776, Hannah Linwood exhibited a Bunch of Grapes at the 1776 Society of Artists exhibition. This textile may have been created solely by Hannah or as a collaboration between mother and daughter. It may also be Mary’s copy of her mother’s textile. The 1845 inventory of Linwood’s home contains several paintings of fruit by Linwood and others that are candidates for the textile’s prototype. The catalogue entry for the textile included lines from Milton’s Paradise Lost. In the Biographical Sketches, Jackson (no first name listed) is described as a painter whose “works are not very numerous, but in high estimation.”17

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Figure C.5  Grapes, c. 1775, Mary or Hannah Linwood, replica after Mr. Jackson, Leicester Museums and Galleries.

Originals: Textiles of Mary Linwood’s Own Design (3) Fox Alarmed Stealing from a Shelter Location unknown Debut: 1801 (Hanover Square) Subject matter focusing on rural game and hunting was popular in Linwood’s gallery and art collection. Foxes and dogs were favorites. Linwood often exhibited this textile in the large first room of each of her exhibition venues. In her exhibition catalogues, this image was accompanied by an excerpt from Somerville’s The Chace, an epic poem that traces the history of hunting in England from the Norman conquest. Landscape—A Fishing Party Location unknown Debut: 1798 (Hanover Square) This image was also hung in Linwood’s first exhibition room among other landscape scenes, popular subject matter in her shows. An excerpt from one of her favorite poems, Thomson’s Seasons was paired with this image in her exhibition catalogues.

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Dog [Spaniel]-from Nature Location unknown Debut: 1810 (Leicester Square) Dogs were the animal most often represented in Linwood’s textiles. The title of this work emphasizes Linwood’s firsthand study of the subject matter. Linwood exhibited this image alongside two Gainsborough replicas in the Cottage.

Linwood (attributed to) Charlotte at Werther’s Tomb (Figure C.6) Leicester Museums and Galleries No signature Dimensions: 12 x 12”/30.5 x 30.5 cm Various secondary sources recount that Charlotte at Werther’s Tomb was inspired by a mezzotint that Linwood received from a friend.18 There is no evidence that this was exhibited in London, as the inscription on the back of the piece indicates. The textile was very likely based on John Raphael Smith’s 1783 stipple print, which in turn was inspired by a c. 1783 drawing by Emma Crewe (c. 1750–1830). Exemplum virtutis images, especially those featuring scenes of mourning and/or widowhood, were particularly popular, especially with young women.19 The depiction of doomed love in Charlotte at Werther’s Tomb was a favorite of printmakers and embroiderers alike.20 If this work was in fact done by Linwood, it is unique in her oeuvre. It features black silk thread on a background of cream-colored silk; Linwood usually only used expensive silk for small details. Its coloring and short staccato stitches imitate the

Figure C.6  Werther’s Tomb, c. 1775, Mary Linwood?, Leicester Museums and Galleries.

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fragmentary dots and lines and soft texture of stipple prints.21 This is the only example of this style in Linwood’s extant embroidery, which suggests that it is an early work or a student one. The circular format of the print would have made it easy to embroider on a tambour frame like those found at the Priory. Its story of virtuous feminine behavior would have made it ideal for a group of schoolgirls.

After Carlo Maratti (or Maratta) The Nativity/Holy Family Leicester Museums and Galleries No signature Dimensions: 67 x 56”/1.7 x 1.4 m Debut: 1810 (Leicester Square) In this image, a dozen putti surround the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus. The red and blue hues of Mary’s gown and cloak have retained much of their brightness. The infant Jesus is naked atop a white swaddling cloth. His left foot, as well as the corner of the manger, is skillfully foreshortened. The Virgin’s veil, cloak, and gown, as well as the cloth beneath Jesus, are sculptural in relation to the human faces. Maratti (1625–1713) (alternative spelling Maratta) was active mostly in Rome. He studied with Baroque painter Andrea Sacchi (1599–1661), whose classicism Maratti emulated. After Sacchi’s death, Maratti enjoyed the patronage of Pope Alexander VII (reigned 1655–67), which helped him to build a wealthy client base. In 1664, Maratti became the director of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome. While the exact prototype for Linwood’s textile is still unknown, it resembles several of his Holy Family compositions; the embroidery may also have been based on a painting created by one of the painter’s followers. This textile was first exhibited in Linwood’s Scripture Room and was one of her most popular textiles, likely because of its maternal nature. After her death, it passed to several family members before a group of over sixty women in Leicester purchased it and gave it to the Leicester Museum and Art Gallery on April 13, 1891.22 Maratti has a lengthy entry in the Biographical Sketches, an indication of his popularity in the early nineteenth century. He was described as a master of beautiful and dignified forms, whose work displayed an enlarged genius. His paintings were also described as worth a great price and still available.23

After James Millar A Carp Location unknown Debut: 1787 (Pantheon)

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Millar (alternatively spelled Miller) was the most popular Birmingham portrait painter in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Between 1771 and 1790, he exhibited at the Royal Academy and the Society of Artists. The exact prototype for this image has not been identified. Linwood often exhibited her replica in the first room of her exhibition venues. In her catalogues, it was paired with excerpts from Windsor Forest and Paradise Lost. According to the Biographical Sketches, Millar’s likenesses “were such strong resemblances as to make them valuable to their possessor, but he had not sufficiently learnt the art of flattery to make them pleasing to those not interested in the subject.”24

After Francisco Mola (previously labeled as Salvator Rosa) Landscape (Figure C.7) Victoria & Albert Textile Center Signed M. Linwood in bottom left corner Dimensions: 18 x 24”/46 x 61 cm Debut: 1809 (Leicester Square) Five small figures are present in this landscape scene. Three of them are dressed in classical clothing and are clustered in the textile’s middle ground. The red and blue thread on these figures retains a great deal of color. To the left of the red cloaked figure, a woman crouches on the ground. Behind the trio figures, one can see a man at work, perhaps harvesting. A rocky formation dominates the right of the textile, while a large tree trunk bisects the left side. Much of the blue sky retains its bright color.

Figure C.7  Landscape, 1809, Mary Linwood, replica after Francisco Mola, Victoria and Albert Museum.

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Based on Linwood’s catalogues, it seems that the prototype was a still unidentified landscape by Pier Francisco Mola. Mola (1612–66) was born in Coldrerio (now Ticino, Switzerland) and was active in Rome in the 1650s and 1660s. He studied with Francesco Albani (1578–1660) before becoming a member of the Academy of St. Luke. He is wellknown for his six versions of his Rest on the Flight into Egypt. His style is characterized by a loose brushstroke and a naturalistic palette. He was a gifted painter of small landscapes similar to the ones that Linwood likely copied. His paintings were often exhibited at the British Institution, where she may have seen his work. Her replica resembles a Landscape with Mythological Figures in the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum.

After George Morland The Farmer’s Stable Location Unknown Debut: Edinburgh (1804) None of the Morland replicas survive. When John Fiott Lee saw the textile in Dublin, he described it as “quite excellent Best picture of all and best done.”25 The replica hung in a prominent spot in the Leicester Square Gallery, where it was one of the most admired textiles. Her replica was very likely based on firsthand study of the original painting, which she was able to do during her stay at Enderby Hall, the home of collector and artist Charles Loraine Smith, who collaborated with Morland on A Litter of Foxes, which Linwood also replicated. Dogs at Play Location unknown Debut: Hanover Square (1801) The first of the Morland replicas that Linwood completed, it was likely based on a print of the painting. Several galleries in London featured Morland’s painting and prints in the opening years of the nineteenth century, years that coincide with Linwood’s replication of his work.26 Linwood’s inventory lists prints by Morland, which likely served as the prototype for her replicas. In her exhibition catalogues, this textile was often paired with lines from Somerville’s poem The Chase. Dogs Watching Setters Kennel of Dogs Pigs Locations unknown Debut: (all) Dublin (1806) The Dublin exhibition featured fifty-two embroideries and was held at the Rotunda, Cavendish Row. In the exhibition catalogue, the Morland replicas were described as

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“lately added,” signaling their commemorative function. They were exhibited in the main room of her gallery there; they later hung in the first room of the Leicester Square Gallery. Only some of these replicas were paired with poetry in Linwood’s exhibition catalogues: Dogs Watching was accompanied with lines from Pope’s Windsor Forest, while Kennel of Dogs (like Dogs at Play) was linked to Somerville’s poem The Chase. In the Biographical Sketches, Morland’s paintings are praised as being “faithful representations of rural nature and human life. His Farmer’s Stable is considered one of the finest of his compositions.”27

After George Morland and Charles Loraine Smith A Litter of Foxes Location unknown Debut: Leicester Square (1809) A Litter of Foxes is best known through Grozer’s 1797 mezzotint.28 The print specifies that Loraine Smith depicted the animals while Morland painted the landscape. In Singleton’s Inside a Gentleman’s Study, Loraine Smith works on A Litter of Foxes, while another artist (Singleton or Morland) holds a palette and stares out at the viewers. A lengthy period passed between Linwood’s stay at Loraine Smith’s home (1791) and the completion and debut of her textile copy of A Litter of Foxes. In Linwood’s exhibition catalogues, the replica was only described as “from a celebrated painting” and was not accompanied by poetic excerpts. The replica’s subject matter clearly complemented images of game and landscape in Linwood’s collection.

After James Northcote Lady Jane Gray Location unknown Dimensions: 9 x 7’ (approx.)/2.7 x 2.1 m Debut: 1806 (Dublin) In his travel diary, English antiquarian John Fiott Lee (1783–1866) described each of the fifty-four embroideries in the Dublin exhibition; Lee thought that the large scale of this copy added to its realism; he also complimented Linwood’s figural and compositional skills.29 Lee likewise remarked on the attention to textiles within the embroidered replica, for Lady Jane’s gown was built up of multiple layers of thread, creating a sculptural profile for the figure.30 As a learned young woman and gifted embroiderer from Linwood’s native Leicestershire, Lady Jane Gray was ideal subject matter for the embroiderer. The nineday queen was prized as a subject for her steadfast character, devotion, piety, and patriotism, qualities that Linwood embodied and encouraged in her students.31 She reinforced an emphasis on femininity by including excerpts about Lady Jane written by British women in the exhibition guide and Biographical Sketches.32

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Northcote, who became an Academician in 1786, created three paintings featuring Lady Jane.33 The version that Linwood copied, Lady Jane Grey in the Tower, 1554, was first seen in Bowyer’s 1793 exhibition of English historical figures, where she was a popular subject.34 Northcote’s painting highlights the piety of Lady Jane rather than her queenship, an emphasis that surely appealed to Linwood. In the image, Abbot John Feckenham follows the orders of Queen Mary by trying to convert the young woman to Catholicism three days before her execution. In the background of the scene, a guard holds a key and a crucifix, symbolizing the foreign Roman Catholic faith and the path to Jane’s freedom. She refuses them and avoids eye contact, turning her head away to pray, preparing for her impending martyrdom to the Protestant faith and, by extension, to England. In the Biographical Sketches, Northcote is described as a modern artist of great merit whose “Lady Jane Grey and Hubert and Arthur will immortalize his name.”35 Linwood’s inventory also lists a painting by Northcote, Joseph’s Two Sons.36 Arthur and Hubert Location unknown Dimensions: 9 x 7’ (approx.)/2.7 x 2.1 m Debut: 1809/10 (Leicester Square) This replica was based on a painting that Linwood purchased from sculptor William Tassie (1777–1860) for 101 guineas, an acquisition noted by both Farington and the Lancaster Gazette.37 The embroiderer clearly admired Northcote’s work, for Linwood owned two more of his paintings, Joseph’s Two Sons (1796) and Inside View of Goring Church (1798) (only listed in Northcote’s account books), and urged one of her brothers to buy an animal painting by the artist.38 In 1825, Linwood lent the Hubert and Prince Arthur to the British Institution (BI) for exhibition. According to Northcote’s account book, the painting was lent to the BI by Miss Winwood, which is almost certainly a misspelling of Linwood’s name.39 An 1825 advertisement for Cooke’s Rivers of Devon also confirms her ownership of this painting.40 In the compressed foreground of Northcote’s Hubert and Prince Arthur, two burly men wait to blind and castrate the young prince with irons, as ordered by his evil uncle King John (ruled 1199–1216), who had a dubious claim to the throne in relation to Arthur, the son born posthumously to John’s older brother Geoffrey.41 A strong chiaroscuro illuminates the subjects, who appear in angelic white surrounded by swathes of crimson drapery. In the exhibition guide, Linwood’s figures were described as life-sized; lines from Shakespeare’s King John accompanied the replica. Although Northcote did not display Lady Jane Gray and Hubert and Prince Arthur as pendants, Linwood exhibited them as such in the Leicester Square Gothic Room. When her visitors looked through prison bars in this chamber, they saw Lady Jane Gray next to her copy of Northcote’s Arthur and Hubert. One of her replicas of Napoleon Bonaparte after Thomas Phillips hung on the opposite wall.

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After John Opie Eloisa, the Subject Taken from Pope’s Celebrated Poem Location unknown Debut: 1787 (Pantheon) Linwood’s 1787 Pantheon guide included poetry for two works: the King Lear (after Reynolds) and Eloisa, the Subject Taken from Pope’s Celebrated Poem. Macklin’s plan for his Poets’ Gallery had been published four months prior to the Pantheon exhibition; his celebration of Shakespeare and Pope undoubtedly influenced hers as well. Opie’s Eloisa appears in Linwood’s inventory, which suggests that a print purchased from Macklin helped in the creation of this textile. Pope’s well-known poem describes the star-crossed love and secret marriage between the twelfth-century Héloïse d’Argenteuil and her older teacher Peter Abelard. In Pope’s poem, Eloisa confesses to the suppressed love that his letter has reawakened in the years since their separation. The medieval lovers were a popular theme with Neoclassical and Romantic artists and writers. Opie, who had close connections to the court of George III and Charlotte, was a well-known painter of historical scenes and famous contemporaries. He was a regular contributor to Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery and was elected a professor at the Royal Academy in 1805. Jephtha’s Rash Vow Location unknown Debut: 1798 (Hanover Square) Opie’s painting was exhibited at Macklin’s Poets’ Gallery in 1790; it was one of several paintings there that Linwood copied and subsequently displayed at the Hanover Square exhibition. As Hedquist demonstrated, the biblical verses that Linwood appended to her copy of the painting were the same as those included in the Macklin exhibition guide, further confirmation of the influence of the Poets’ Gallery on the embroiderer. This replica was routinely displayed as the first replica in Linwood’s first room of the Leicester Square Gallery. According to the Biographical Sketches, “Sir Joshua Reynolds was one of his greatest patrons: he was self-taught, and his talents highly esteemed; he painted with great force and effect, of which his Jephtha and his Heloise (Eloisa) are striking illustrations.”42 Literature: Hedquist, “How a Lost Painting Endured,” 259–260.

After Reverend Matthew William Peters The Fortune Teller/s Location unknown Debut: 1798 (Hanover Square)

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Peters (1742–1814) exhibited at the Society of Artists and the Royal Academy, becoming a member of the latter institution in 1777. In the early 1780s, Peters lived in Scalford, Leicestershire, where Linwood may have been introduced to him. He served as the Royal Academy’s Honorary Chaplain from 1784 to 1788. Surviving prints of Peters’ painting depict an age-old moral subject, a trio of gamesters who try to deceive each other. In the Biographical Sketches, Peters is described as “a painter of the divine who has also descended to lower subjects, of which this is a specimen”.43

After Thomas Phillips Napoleon (first copy) (Color Plate 11) Victoria & Albert Museum No signature Dimensions: 48 x 43”/1.2 x 1.1 m Linwood’s Napoleon portraits mark the only time that she made two replicas from the same prototype. They were likely inspired by her brief trip to Paris in late 1802 and March of 1803 during the Peace of Amiens. Her time in Paris remains undocumented, including when she met Phillips and made her replica.44 Philips’s painting was based on a sketch done during a dinner with the French leader.45 While she was in France, she reportedly was awarded the Freedom of Paris medal by Napoleon and visited the Louvre to see his spoils, although both claims have proved difficult to confirm.46 Upon her return to England, she wrote to Boulton of her time abroad, grateful to “have escaped that political net, which entrapped so many of my Countrymen in Paris this Spring” and took so many men away “in the bloom of youth.”47 The oval shape of Phillips’s prototype is still visible in Linwood’s replicas, to which she added a parapet. Instead of depicting the French leader in his official uniform of First Consul, Philips’s portrait features Napoleon in the tunic of a general of the First French Republic, very similar to the clothing in Gros’s depiction of the general at Pont d’Arcole (1796).48 This choice of uniform suggests the union of military and governmental leadership that brought him to power; it celebrates that series of political events as much as it celebrates the man. Linwood’s rendering of the leader’s uniform stands out, for one can still see the eagles that decorate his buttons. His vibrant red collar contrasts beautifully with the earth tones behind it. In Phillips’s portrait, he wears a white shirt and a dark blue neck scarf underneath it; the neck scarf in Linwood’s version has faded considerably. Luminous silken strands are seen on his right eye, an epaulette, and uniform buttons. The silken thread is also seen on top of the already lighter thread that emulates the light source of the Phillips prototype. The layering created a sculptural effect, a decision that caused that section of the textile to be in greater relief.

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Figure C.8  Napoleon, c. 1802, Mary Linwood, replica after Thomas Phillips (2nd copy), Leicester Museums and Galleries.

Napoleon (second copy) (Figure C.8) Leicester Museums and Galleries No signature Dimensions: 48 x 43”/1.2 x 1.09 m Debut: 1809/10 (Leicester Square) Linwood’s image capitalized on a Napoleonic craze in England which saw the production of portraits by Phillips, Northcote, Tussaud, and other lesser-known artists. This replica may have been inspired by her visit with the emperor’s brother Lucien (1775–1840), a well-known art connoisseur who lived in the English town of Ludlow between 1810 and 1814.49 In Linwood’s exhibition guide, she included lines from the English poet Edward Young (1683–1765) and Shakespeare’s Henry VIII, both of which were critical of ambition and spoke of the ephemerality of fame.50 In the Gothic Room, her visitors may have equated the hubris and fall of Napoleon with the evil of King John and Queen Mary implied in the Northcote replicas nearby.51

After Raphael Madonna della Sedia Location unknown Debut: 1798 (Hanover Square)

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This replica was one of Linwood’s most prized copies; it was inherited by her brother William Linwood, Esq., of Bridgen Hall, Enfield; it then passed into the possession of David Henry, Forty Hill.52 In John Fiott Lee’s travel diary, he wrote that this Linwood replica was very like the original painting (then in Paris), which he had also seen. He enthused that “the female (Mary) is accurate beyond expectation.”53 In the Biographical Sketches, the author wrote that this painting “was considered one of the most celebrated of his compositions in the Gallery of Florence; it is now at Paris.54 Verse from Robert Dodsley’s Collection of Poems (1782), a copy of which Linwood owned, was part of the catalogue entry for the Raphael textile.

After Philip Reinagle An American Owl Location unknown Debut: 1798 (Hanover Square) Philip Reinagle (1749–1833) was an English painter of animals, landscapes, and botanical scenes. A student of Allan Ramsay, Reinagle regularly exhibited at the Royal Academy and British Institution and was elected a Royal Academician in 1812. The exact prototype for this textile is unknown. According to Linwood’s inventory, she owned either a painting or print of his moody A Setter on the Moor.55 In the entry on Reinagle in the Biographical Sketches, he is described as “a universal painter of portraits, figures, landscapes, cattle, birds, and is equally excellent in every line; he has but to touch the canvas and his subjects rise to life.”56

After Rembrandt van Rijn (Circle of) (attributed to Linwood) An Old Woman Reading: The Prophetess Hannah (also Known as Rembrandt’s Mother) (Figure C.9) Leicester Museums and Galleries No signature Dimensions: 41 x 35”/1.04 m x 89 cm Linwood did not exhibit this textile at any of her public exhibitions. It is similar in style to her work; she may have produced it as a gift to the painting’s then owner (Henry Herbert, 10th Earl of Pembroke). It may have been made by someone in Linwood’s circle. In literature on the embroiderer, this image is sometimes misidentified as “Eloisa after J. Opie, a nun reading a book.” The textile was based on a painting in the Wilton House Collection now attributed to Jan Lievens (1607–74) and an unknown associate of Rembrandt.

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Figure C.9  Old Woman Reading/The Prophetess Hannah, Mary Linwood?, replica after circle of Rembrandt, c. 1800.

After Guido Reni Head of St. Peter Location unknown Debut: 1787 (Pantheon) This appears to be the first-known replica of religious subject matter that Linwood created. Reni’s popularity in the eighteenth century likely fostered its creation. The exact prototype for the replica has not been identified; one candidate is an oval painting in the collection of the Prado.57 In the Biographical Sketches, Guido is praised for his great reputation, beautiful depiction of heads, and elegant drapery.58

After Joshua Reynolds Reynolds Self-Portrait Bowes Museum No signature Dimensions: 28.5 x 24.1”/72 x 61 cm This embroidered portrait was not included in Linwood’s exhibition catalogues. According to the Biographical Sketches, however, Linwood regularly displayed five copies of Reynolds’s paintings; this textile may have been one of them. The work is

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stylistically like her replica of King Lear. She likely based the replica on a studio copy of the Reynolds portrait, perhaps by Northcote, who worked as an assistant in Reynolds’s studio between 1771 and 1776.59 King Lear Bowes Museum No signature Dimensions: 29 x 24.6”/77 x 62.5 cm Debut: 1786 (Medal winner at Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce exhibition) Linwood’s creation of this work was calculated to take advantage of Shakespeare’s popularity in late eighteenth-century England. Two business ventures of late 1786 (the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery) and early 1787 (Macklin’s Poets’ Gallery), with which Linwood was familiar, further fostered this phenomenon. In 1762, Reynolds painted his first version of this subject, although his best-known iteration dates to 1783. William Sharp’s engraving of the painting was published May 1, 1783, by Boydell. Linwood may have used a pantograph in conjunction with the print to create her replica. If she did meet with Reynolds prior to his death, she might have had the opportunity to study the painting firsthand.60 Laughing Girl (Girl Leaning on a Pedestal) Private collection No signature Dimensions: 39 x 33”/99 x 83 cm Debut: 1798 (Hanover Square) In the Hanover and Leicester Square venues, this work, Girl and Kitten, and Sleeping Girl were interspersed throughout the first room, hanging close to her popular Morland replicas as examples of modern English masterpieces. A polygraphed version of this painting was seen at the Polygraphic Society exhibitions of the 1790s, where Linwood may have seen it. In Linwood’s exhibition catalogue, lines from Milton’s L’Allegro were paired with this textile. This excerpt amplified some of the features of the happy girl in the textile, including “mirth, and joy, and jollity … and wreathed smiles.” The entry on Reynolds in the Biographical Sketches closely resembles the entry on the artists in Matthew Pilkington’s The Lives of the Most Eminent Painters (1803). Girl and Kitten Location unknown Debut: 1798 (Hanover Square) Linwood did not often exhibit this textile with poetry; in the exhibition catalogue from 1831, it is paired with lines by William Somerville, the author of one of her favorite poems, The Chase. Tourist John Fiott Lee described this work as “pretty. No marks of

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genius either in the design or in the work.”61 Multiple copies of this work exist; Linwood likely based her textile on one of these, perhaps the one created by John Russell.62 Sleeping Girl Location unknown Debut: 1798 (Hanover Square) Linwood’s prototype for this textile is unknown; it was likely based on one of the many copies of the painting.63 In the Leicester Square Gallery, she paired it with poetry by Abraham Cowley.

After Peter Paul Rubens Landscape by Moonlight A Sea View, in Imitation of Chalk Drawing Location unknown Debut: 1787 (Pantheon) Linwood exhibited these two lost textiles (described as pendants) early on in her career. Reynolds owned Landscape by Moonlight, so perhaps Linwood based her replica of it on firsthand study. It was exhibited with lines from Thomson’s Seasons in the Pantheon and Hanover Square venues.

After Jacob Ruisdael Sea Piece: Brisk Gale Location unknown Debut: 1798 (Hanover Square) Waterfall Location unknown Debut: 1801 (Hanover Square) Tom Taylor’s account of his visit to the Leicester Square gallery provides a description of the textiles seen in the Dens. The Tygress and a Lion and Lionesses after Stubbs were seen alongside an image of a “bright sea breaking on a rocky shore.”64 William Chambers similarly mentions a beautiful sea view.65 The maritime scene in the third cave here was likely Sea Piece: Brisk Gale or Waterfall, both of which were not exhibited in the Dens but in the first gallery of the Leicester Square exhibition. The Biographical Sketches praises Ruisdael for his plein air sketching, perfect understanding of chiaroscuro, and rendering of torrents and falls of water.66 Sea Piece: Brisk Gale was exhibited until 1818. In Linwood’s exhibition catalogues, it was accompanied by lines from William Falconer’s The Shipwreck (1762). In the catalogue for Waterfall, Linwood reproduced Thomson’s eponymous poem in its entirety.

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After John Russell (Self) Portrait of Mary Linwood Private Collection No signature Dimensions: 23 x 18”/58 x 45 cm Debut: 1787 (Pantheon) Linwood commissioned two pastel portraits of herself from John Russell, a highly respected pastel specialist who worked for the Royal Family. The dimensions of the two pastels are very similar (23.6 x 17.3”, 23 x 16.5”). The embroidered replica (Color Plate 2) was based on the first of these two commissions. After the completion of Hoppner’s oil portrait in 1800 (Cover Image), Linwood only exhibited the embroidered portrait on an infrequent basis. In her exhibition catalogues, she appended a line from Shakespeare’s “I have lived long enough.” Literature: Strobel, “Embroidery, Gender, and Self-Portraiture,” “Women’s Embroidered Self-Portraiture,” and “Stitching the Stage,” 185–87; Kenny, McMillan, and Myrone, British Folk Art, 106. Girl Weeping over a Starved Goldfinch (Figure C.10) Leicester Museums and Galleries Signature to the right of dress sash Dimensions: 39 x 33”/99 x 83 cm Debut: 1798 (Hanover Square)

Figure C.10  Girl Weeping over a Starved Woodfinch, 1798, Mary Linwood, replica after John Russell, Leicester Museums and Galleries.

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Linwood based this image on a pastel by Russell; perhaps J.64.36135 in Neil Jeffares’s Dictionary of Pastellists before 1800. In the textile, a young girl holds her head in her hands, bereft because of the death of her pet. The bird’s red plumage and the wellexecuted bow and sash still retain a good deal of bright color while the bird cage is rendered in a convincing manner. This sentimental image would have blended nicely with Linwood’s other depictions of young children after paintings by Gainsborough and Reynolds. Linwood reproduced William Cowper’s 1780 poem “On a Goldfinch Starved to Death in His Cage” in her exhibition catalogues entries for this work. Cottage Girl/Frugal Fare (Figure C.11) Leicester Museums and Galleries No signature Dimensions: 46 x 39”/1.16 m x 99 cm Debut: 1798 (Hanover Square) Linwood based her work on Russell’s pastel of 1790; J.64.3529 in Jeffares’s Dictionary of Pastellists Before 1800. In 1807, the pastel was sold to Linwood’s good friend Sir William Skeffington. Some of the most beautifully rendered parts of this textile include the girl’s apron and the lattice work seen in the background. Inside a cottage, the young girl appears to be holding a basket filled with loaves of bread. A knife and tankard are seen on the table. Her red cheeks and dress remain bright in hue.

Figure C.11  Cottage Girl/Frugal Fare, 1798, Mary Linwood, replica after John Russell, Leicester Museums and Galleries.

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In the Biographical Sketches, Russell is described as “one of the most eminent of our English crayon-painters. His works are numerous and beautiful, his portraits strikingly faithful and pleasing, without too much flattering his subjects; he also painted rural scenes with great effect, of which here are two very pleasing specimens.”67

After Henry Singleton Portrait of Daniel Lambert Location unknown Debut: 1806/7 (Dublin & Cork) Linwood’s embroidered portrait of Daniel Lambert (1770–1809) commemorated a popular Leicester figure. Lambert was an engraver, animal breeder, and jailer who was famous in his hometown for weighing fifty stone. This image may have been based on Charles Turner’s 1806 print of Singleton’s portrait or on the original painting itself. The textile debuted in 1806 in Dublin, where traveler John Fiott Lee pronounced it “accurate even to the Chaw (jaw) and a living resemblance.”68 His age and weight are also part of the description. Linwood only exhibited this textile in Dublin and Cork.

After George Stubbs Tygress (Color Plate 16) Yale Center for British Art No signature Dimensions: 18 x 24”/46 x 59 cm Debut: 1798 (Hanover Square) John Dixon’s mezzotint engraving (November 1, 1772), whose dimensions match those of the textile, was the likely prototype for Linwood’s textile. The print was based on Stubbs’s much larger painting of 1769, which was created after the painter’s visit to the Duke of Marlborough’s menagerie at Blenheim Palace.69 The Polygraphic Society exhibited colored versions of the Tygress for sale in the 1790s alongside the original painting; these may have also aided Linwood in the creation of the textile. Henry Noel, Earl of Gainsborough, saw Linwood at work on her version in Leicester. On September 18, 1792, he wrote to his sister Lady Elizabeth that “the Tiger is admirable and the merit of the working in of the Back-ground is astonishing.”70 Before the Leicester Square Gallery opened, this work and another Stubbs replica hung next to Salvator Mundi and were the last works that visitors saw in Linwood’s exhibition. In 1810, Linwood began to exhibit both copies in the Dens room in the Leicester Square Gallery with a Seascape. The Dens appear to have been constructed of a lightweight material (perhaps papier mâché). They may have

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been inspired by popular forms of entertainment such as garden grottoes or urban peepshows. The Dens’ three-dimensional features, coupled with Linwood’s layering of thread on the Stubbs replicas, would have enhanced the sculptural features of the display. In her exhibition catalogues, Linwood excerpted poetry from Thomson and Milton to accompany the Stubbs: This tiger darting fierce Impetuous on the prey his glance has doom’d (Thomson, Summer, lines 916–17) Then as a tiger, who by chance hath spy’d In some purlieu two gentle fawns at play Strait crouches close, then rising changes oft’ His couchant watch, as one who chose his ground, Whence rushing he might surest seize them both Griped in each paw. (Milton, Paradise Lost, 4: 403–08)

In the Biographical Sketches, Stubbs was described as “a painter of eminence … who gave vigour and life to his subjects, which no one has yet surpassed, and but few have equalled [sic]. He was esteemed, in his line, the first of the English school.”71 Lion and Lioness Location unknown Debut: 1798 (Hanover Square) From 1810 onwards, the textile was exhibited in the Dens. Richard Houston’s mezzotint of 1772 may have also been a source for Linwood.72 Colored prints of the painting were also widely available in the 1790s when the embroiderer created her Stubbs replicas.73 Linwood exhibited this textile with lines from Pope’s highly valued translation of the Iliad (1715–20), which the embroiderer owned. In the image of the Dens from the Biographical Sketches, a lioness growls at two lions, one next to her and one above her. In Pope’s edition, Ajax, protecting the body of the dead Achilles, is compared to a lioness (like the lion in Linwood’s image) shielding her young: Thus in the centre of some gloomy wood With many a step, the lioness surrounds Her tawny young, beset by men and hounds. Elate her heart, and rousing all her powers, Dark o’er the fiery balls each hanging eye-brow lowers. (Book 18)

Neither the Tygress nor the Lioness sold at Linwood’s 1846 posthumous sale. Lion Emerging from a Cave, attributed to Linwood (Figure C.12) Leicester Museums and Galleries No signature

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Figure C.12 Lion Emerging from a Cave, 1798, Mary Linwood?, replica after George Stubbs and George Parbury, Leicester Museums and Galleries.

Dimensions: 24” x 20”/59 x 51 cm Debut: 1798 (Hanover Square) The textile features a large lion emerging from a cave. The awkward pose of the animal here is in stark contrast to several types of realistically rendered plant life in its foreground. A large pink flowering plant (perhaps celosia) is in the foreground; a smaller version of it is close to the lion’s front paw. On the upper right-hand side, green coils of bullion and French knot stitches create cascading foliage on top of the textile’s surface, adding a three-dimensional quality to the copy. The lion is like several creatures seen in Stubbs’s many paintings of fighting horses and lions in which he explored the idea of the sublime.74 Linwood’s textile was inspired by a coin minted by Boulton that celebrated an abolitionist victory, the founding of a colony of freed slaves in Sierra Leone. In the 1760s, Neoclassical sculptor George Parbury (fl. 1760–95) created several images of Africa inspired by Stubbs’s paintings.75 In the early years of the abolitionist movement, activist Henry Thornton (1760–1815) and the Sierra Leone Company asked Boulton to create a coin for the colony.76 The industrialist, who was active in anti-slavery efforts in Birmingham, based the coin on Parbury’s design (Figure C.13).77 In late 1792, perhaps when Linwood began work on  her replicas of the Tygress and Lion and Lionesses, Boulton apparently gave her several of the newly minted Sierra Leone coins.78 The coin’s obverse features a defiant lion atop a hill, alluding to their triumph over evil and to the Spanish name of the colony, the Mountain of Lions.79 On the reverse, two clasped hands, one Caucasian, one African, indicate the ideological underpinnings of the colony. They also signify friendship between the races at a time when British ships still carried slaves across the Atlantic Ocean. Although further research remains to be done, this suggests that the textile may have been connected to abolitionist efforts.

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Figure C.13  Sierra Leone Coin, 1791, George Parbury, Assay Office, 178.

In a February 1798 letter to Boulton, Linwood asked him to enlarge the Lion coin from its original size (1.22 in./3.1 cm), a request that suggests that she displayed the coins in tandem with the textile at the Hanover Square exhibition that year.80 In Linwood’s 1798 exhibition catalogue, no. 34 is listed as an “An Original.” This may have been Lion Emerging from a Cave, since it was listed next to the other Stubbs replicas in the publication. In the process of creating her replica, Linwood enlarged the lion in relation to its background, perhaps a result of working from a coin, a smaller than usual prototype for her. While the pose of the lion resembles its model, she replaced the hill with a cave that tied it to her other Stubbs replicas. The replica was given to the Leicester Museum by M. A. Coleman in 1910. The donor may have been related to the Leicester Coltman family, to which Linwood’s friend and abolitionist Elizabeth Heyrick belonged.

After Claude-Joseph Vernet Landscape-Sea through a Rock Location unknown Debut: 1798 (Hanover Square) Despite the title of this work, it does not appear to have been the replica depicted in Color Plate 4 although Vernet’s A Calm Sea (1748) (Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza) resembles the image seen in the third opening in the Dens. It may also be based on A Mediterranean Harbour by Vernet in the Wilton House Collection. Linwood last displayed the Vernet replica in 1804 at the Edinburgh exhibition.

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After Richard Westall Gleaner Location unknown Debut: 1798 (Hanover Square) This textile was exhibited with several lines from a poem by Linwood’s friend Susannah Watts entitled An Autumnal Scene: Written upon Viewing Miss Linwood’s Picture of the Gleaner. The entire poem was reproduced in the Biographical Sketches. Woman and Child (Harvesters) Taking Shelter from a Storm Location unknown Debut: 1812 (Leicester Square) Linwood owned four colored prints of this image, one of which was the prototype for the textile, which was produced around the same time that Westall painted Linwood’s portrait.81 In the Biographical Sketches, Westall is described as “inimitable, universally admired, and the father of water-color drawing,” a medium that Linwood loved.82

After Richard Wilson A Landscape View in Wales, The Warmth and Serenity of a Summer’s Evening Is Attempted To Be Described. Location unknown Debut: 1787 (Pantheon) Wilson was a Welsh landscape painter who was one of the founding members of the Royal Academy. Wilson’s single-minded focus on landscape painting made him  a  pioneer in the field, and subsequent painters such as John Constable and J. M. W. Turner were indebted to his work. Although the exact prototype for Linwood’s piece has not yet been identified, Wilson’s subject matter was part of the embroiderer’s celebration of the rustic past beauty of England and Wales. The lengthy entry on Wilson in the Biographical Sketches is copied verbatim from Matthew Pilkington’s The Lives of the Most Eminent Painters (1803).

After Joseph Wright of Derby Cottage on Fire/Cottage in Flames Location unknown Debut: 1798 (Hanover Square) A majority of the Wright of Derby replicas debuted in 1798, suggesting that their creation was in part meant to memorialize the artist who had died the previous year. It

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is not surprising that Linwood chose to replicate four of Wright of Derby’s paintings, given his friendship with her mentor Boulton and his connections to her birthplace of Birmingham. Linwood’s inventory includes this painting, a £42 purchase that is confirmed by Wright’s account book, which also lists her as an early print subscriber to Wright’s Dead Soldier, a patriotic image of a British soldier’s death in a countryside marred by battle.83 The replica was not usually exhibited with poetic verse in Linwood’s exhibition catalogues. Virgil’s Tomb by Moonlight Location unknown Debut: 1798 (Hanover Square) This historicizing subject matter was well received by Linwood’s visitors. The entry on Wright in Biographical Sketches describes him as “an excellent painter … his landscapes are beautiful. The effect of moon light he studied from nature, and much injured his health by exposing himself to the night air. No one has ever excelled so much in the union of fire and moon-light in one piece, as this admirable artist.”84 In Linwood’s exhibition catalogues, this replica was accompanied with verse from Dodsley’s Collection that nostalgically describes the tomb of the Roman poet, which was overgrown with moss. Landscape, Effect of Moonlight (near Lake Albano) Location unknown Debut: 1798 (Hanover Square) This replica may have been inspired by a polygraphed version of the painting exhibited by the Polygraphic Society in the 1790s. In Linwood’s exhibition catalogues, the replica was often paired with an excerpt from Cowper’s Task. Mt. Vesuvius Location unknown Debut: 1801 (Hanover Square) This replica may have also been inspired by a polygraphed version of the painting exhibited by the Polygraphic Society in the 1790s. Poetry translated by Christopher Pitt (1699–1748) accompanied this replica in Linwood’s exhibition catalogues.

Notes Introduction   1 In this volume, original and prototype designate the first version of an artwork made by an artist. The words copy, replica, and textile reproduction refer to Linwood’s copies of paintings. Both copy and reproduction were widely used by artists in the eighteenth century to describe a copy. The term replica, which was first used to describe artistic copies in the early nineteenth century, is also used as a synonym for Linwood’s copies. See OED Online, s.v. “replica, n. (and adj.),” accessed June 4, 2020. https://www-oed-com.libproxy.evansville.edu/view/Entry/162874?redirected From=replica. Although the term textile was not widely used in the artistic lexicon until the mid-twentieth century, it is employed here as a synonym for needlework and embroidery. Finally, a multiple designates an artist’s own copy of his/her own artwork. Of the artists whom Linwood copied, Reynolds was the best known for making such versions.   2 I refer to Linwood by her last name except for when I discuss her in relation to her mother Hannah Linwood.   3 Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 4–5. The French were often perceived as the Catholic other.   4 See Hoock, “‘Struggling against a Vulgar Prejudice’,” 572, for an analysis of the practice of “collecting British” as a form of cultural patriotism. Hoock argues that cultural patriotism was particularly popular among the newly rich and was often accompanied by philanthropic donations to the armed forces and other organizations related to the arts.   5 On the popularity of internal tourism amongst the British in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, see Colley, Britons, 185–6.   6 Linwood’s will (PROB 11/2019/315, UK National Archives) was proved by the Prerogative Court of Canterbury on June 2, 1845. For income calculations, see MeasuringWorth, “Computing ‘Real Value’ over Time with a Conversion between U.K. Pounds and U.S. Dollars, 1791 to Present.” This calculation is based on the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) deflator.   7 This figure was obtained by the following calculus, based solely on Linwood’s years and expenses at the Leicester Square Gallery. At the time of Linwood’s death, she was worth £45,000. I have estimated that her contributions to the renovations there were £4000, roughly 1/3 of the £13,290 total shared between her and her colessees. Thirty-six years of a £250 rent = £9000, thirty-six years of living expenses of £200 = £7200; thirty-six years of property taxes and advertising costs amounting to annual costs of approximately £50 = £1800. Subtracting these from £45,000 results in £23,000. Assuming (very conservatively) that Linwood’s ticket revenue amounted to half of this amount (£11,500), its conversion into shillings (20 shillings: £1) equals 230,000 shillings. During her years of operation, her admission fee ranged between 1 and 2s. A total of 230,000 shillings divided by 2s equals 115,000 visitors during her thirty-six years of operation, resulting in an annual average of 3,194.

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  8 My definition of small museum is based on my own experience as a curator of a small museum and guidelines established by the American Alliance of Museums. Although somewhat dated, the metrics provided by Middleton in “Purpose of Museums and Special Characteristics of Independents,” 108–11 are also helpful.   9 According to David H. Solkin, 61,381 people visited the Academy in 1781 during the five weeks that the summer exhibition was open. This number steadily increased to 91,827 by 1822 and started to decline thereafter. See Solkin, “‘This Great Mart of Genius’,” 5. 10 Roach, “The Ecosystem of Exhibitions,” 1. 11 Here intermediality is defined as a way of understanding the relations between two forms of media, rather than a hybrid of several different media. 12 Their instrumental texts include Nochlin, “Why Are There No Great Women Artists?”; Broude and Garrard, Feminism and Art History and The Expanding Discourse; Pollock, Vision and Difference; and Sheriff, The Exceptional Woman. 13 Spies-Gans, A Revolution on Canvas. By examining women’s art production in London and Paris through the lens of archival (mostly exhibition) data, Spies-Gans argues that women artists had a more substantial presence in these European capitals than previous art historical narratives have suggested. In “Why Do We Think There Have Been No Great Women Artists?” Spies-Gans contextualizes the production of Nochlin’s essay and suggests ways in which the terms greatness and professionalism can be more inclusively used. 14 Kauffman and Moser’s connection to two institutions that specialize in the art of record keeping has helped to ensure that their careers have been better documented than their female peers; yet their inclusion in the Academy’s founding is by no means well documented. See for example, Vickery, “Hidden from History.” 15 On the popularity of English landscape painting as images of comfort during the Napoleonic era, see Barrell, The Dark Side of the Landscape, 116–17, and my discussion of the genre in Chapter Two. 16 Lee viewed Linwood’s embroidery during her Dublin show of 1806. He was struck by the large size and realism of the Northcote replica, commenting that “Miss Linwoods [sic] performance in the Countenances is exquisite….the subject is interesting, composition well executed and the ideas expressed (in picture) and which it excites are pleasing yet serious.” See Byrne, ed., A Scientific, Antiquarian, and Picturesque Tour, 291 (hereafter Byrne/Lee) and the January 21, 1807, Hibernian Journal (no. 9141). 17 Chambers, The Book of Days, 348–9. Chambers, who did not visit the gallery, based his account on the eyewitness account of a Mr. Lambert. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid. 20 Linwood’s visitors referred to the rooms as adaptions, passages, and recesses. My use of the term installation is distinct from the environments created during and since the 1960s by Marcel Duchamp, Sol LeWitt, Judy Chicago, Tracey Emin, and others. 21 Crary, “Géricault, the Panorama, and Sites of Reality,” 12. Crary discussed this terminology in relation to Madame Tussaud’s figure of Napoleon and objects that she exhibited with it. 22 Madame Tussaud (born Marie Grosholtz) opened her London establishment in 1835 after traveling with her exhibition through Britain and Ireland for thirty years. There is no evidence that Tussaud and Linwood met, but their careers have several notable parallels. For example, wax modeling and embroidery are routinely left out of the art historical canon. Tussaud’s practice had its origins in anatomical wax modeling

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(the intersection of art and science) and to a lesser extent, the votive object. The details of Tussaud’s life are widely known; for nuanced examinations of her practice and a comprehensive bibliography, see Engel, “The Lady Vanishes” and Wallace, “Representing Corporal ‘Truth’.” 23 OED Online, s. v. “stage, n.,” accessed May 11, 2021. https://www.oed.com/view/Entr y/188653?redirectedFrom=stage+property. 24 Sofer, The Stage Life of Props, 3. 25 Royal Academy of Arts, Abstract of the Instrument of Institution and Laws, 25. According to the Royal Academy’s Rules and Orders of 1768, “no picture copied from a picture or print, a drawing from a drawing; drawings from pictures, a medal from a medal; a chasing from a chasing; a model from a model, or any other species of Sculpture, or any Copy, shall be admitted in the Exhibition. N.B. This rule extends to honorary exhibitors.” 26 The needlework submissions were the work of honorary exhibitors and may have been copies of original paintings. They included: 219 (A Tulip), 232 (A Heron and a Dog), and 234 (A Head). Eager to establish itself as the preeminent artistic institution in England, the Academy quickly forbade the display of needlework, artificial flowers, silhouettes, and shellfish. See Royal Academy Council Minutes, 9 and April 13, 1770 and Hutchison, The History of the Royal Academy, 54–8. 27 Reynolds, Discourses, 92–3. 28 Bermingham, “The Origin of Painting and the Ends of Art,” 160. 29 Benhamou, “Imitation in the Decorative Arts,” 3. 30 See Baxandall, “The Period Eye.” 31 The formative scholarship of Amanda Vickery and Ann Bermingham has gone a long way to combat simplistic assessments of women’s art related to copying and amateurism. See Vickery, Behind Closed Doors, The Gentleman’s Daughter, and “The Theory and Practice of Female Accomplishment,” and Bermingham, Learning to Draw. Both scholars provide sophisticated ways to consider the concepts of craft and amateur in relation to femininity and commercialization. 32 For a discussion of the relationship between imitation, nature, women, and the industrial arts, see Bermingham, “The Origin of Painting and the Ends of Art,” 155, and the fourth and fifth chapters of Bermingham, Learning to Draw as well as Heer, “Copyists,” 59–60. 33 For example, Duchamp’s intellectual manipulation of the copy, rather than its creation, is often praised. 34 See Metcalf, “Replacing the Myth of Modernism,” 42. 35 Cluckie, The Rise and Fall of Art Needlework, 7. Linwood’s textiles, which feature stitches of varying lengths, are quite unlike craft embroidery, which sells massproduced kits that its practitioners use to make identical creations. Furthermore, her embroidery does not fit neatly into the category of craft, which suggests leisure time. 36 Several reviews of the exhibition reflect this limited engagement with other artistic genres. Ben Luke described the textiles as “teeter[ing] between the downright naff and the slyly smart” and “hideous and kitschy, if undoubtedly accomplished.” See Ben Luke, “British Folk Art, Tate Britain–Exhibition Review: ‘Unexpectedly Ravishing’,” Evening Standard, June 9, 2014. http://www.standard.co.uk/goingout/ exhibitions/british-folk-art-tate-britain-exhibition-review-unexpectedlyravishing-9511718.html.

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37 Parker, The Subversive Stitch. She also posited that some women managed to circumvent the uniformity demanded by the medium and communicate rebellious messages of their own. 38 In the pioneering Queering the Subversive Stitch: Men and the Culture of Needlework, Joseph McBrinn examines how masculinities were excised from the history of embroidery. He also highlights the presence of needlework in medical, legal, and socio-cultural discourses. 39 Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution,” 519–31; and Scott, “Gender,” cf. 1067–71. Scott defines gender as “a constitutive element of social relationships based on the perceived differences between the sexes.” For her, gender is the primary field [although not the only one] within which or by the means of which power, also a fluid concept, is articulated. 40 For more on the intermediate qualities of textiles, see Wigston Smith, “Gender and the Material Turn” and Peck, Interwoven Globe, 5. 41 Goggin and Tobin, eds., Women and the Material Culture of Needlework. In particular, Goggin, “Introduction: Threading Women,” and “The Needle as the Pen: Intentionality, Needlework, and the Production of Alternative Discourses of Power” by Heather Pristash, Inez Schaechterle, and Sue Carter Wood. The contributors to this volume examine the cultural value of textiles as a form of written communication. See also King, “Of Needles and Pens.” 42 Frye, Pens and Needle, xvi, 25–6. 43 The contributors (especially Wigston Smith, Dyer, Ariane Fennetaux, and Crystal B. Lake) detail how individuals learned to make through image, practice, object, sociability, and/or instruction. Their exploration of the diversity of making practices amongst different social classes has been helpful to my analysis of Linwood’s work. The essays in Women and Material Culture 1660–1830, edited by Batchelor and Kaplan, provide important approaches to the study of objects produced by women artists. 44 Recent examinations of the autobiographical and biographical qualities of textiles include St. Clair, The Golden Thread; Fowler, The Modern Embroidery Movement; Hunter, Threads of Life; and Postrel, The Fabric of Civilization. 45 For Pointon, “portraiture is a question of the relationship between the self as art and the self in art” and “is always more than a sum of its parts.” Hanging the Head, 1. 46 There have been several recent scholarly studies relating to Linwood. In an excellent article, “How a Lost Painting Endured,” Valerie Hedquist provides an important analysis of the relationship between Linwood’s galleries and Thomas Macklin’s Gallery of English Poets (also known as the Poets’ Gallery). In Pictorial Embroidery in England, Rosika Denoyers examines Linwood’s needlepainting in relation to the subsequent popularity of Berlin woolwork during the nineteenth century. In her M.A. thesis (“‘Unexpected Excellence’”), Alexandra Zöe Dostal examines Linwood’s career in relation to British national identity, a conclusion that we came to independently. Art historian Matthew Craske has recently published an article on Linwood’s copies of religious paintings, “Mary Linwood of Leicester’s Pious Address.” 47 Blaakman, “Q & A: Zara Anishanslin, Portrait of a Woman in Silk.” 48 While some aspects of my reconstructions are based on fact, others are based on well-informed, contextualized conclusions. For a recent discussion of the validity of this approach, see Engel, “Stage Beauties,” 750. 49 See for example, in “Artifacts and Personal Identity,” 213, White and Beaudry argue that “it is the ‘small’ things that often offer the greatest promise for understanding the multifaceted aspects of identity bound up with a person’s actions and appearances.”

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50 Thomas and Hess, Mary Linwood 1755–1845. At least seven of these were attributed to or described as “school of.” In the same year as the exhibition, Hess (who was then Leicester Museum art assistant) approached the editor of Connoisseur about writing an article on Linwood. His offer was rejected. 51 Eleven of her works were exhibited at this show. 52 Both pamphlets were uncritical in nature and repeat standard biographical information about Linwood first published in the nineteenth century. See Thomas and Hess, Mary Linwood 1755–1845 and Whitcomb, Mary Linwood. 53 Models for my modified monograph include Mansfield’s The Perfect Foil and Gruskin, “Designing Woman,” 147, in which she writes about avoiding the monographic trap of hero worship. 54 Bourdieu, Distinction, especially 11–17. In Bourdieu’s examination of the close relationship between intellectual products and their producers to their social conditions of existence, he identifies the various ways of acquiring taste, which include social origin and educational capital (roughly defined as good secondary and post-secondary education). While taste often signifies class, educational—especially cultural competence—can level class disparities. 55 For an analysis of Queen Charlotte’s role as cultural patron, see Strobel, The Artistic Matronage of Queen Charlotte and Marschner, Enlightened Princesses. For a broader discussion of the phenomenon of matronage, or the support of women artists by women patrons, see Strobel, “Royal ‘Matronage’ of Women Artists,” 3–9. 56 This endeavor has in part been inspired by Roach’s fascinating article “Rehanging Reynolds at the British Institution.” I am grateful to Paris Spies-Gans for bringing this article to my attention. 57 Frederickson, introduction to Singular Women, 13. 58 Gruskin, “Designing Woman,” 147–8. 59 Frederickson, introduction to Singular Women, 5. This point was first made by Broude and Garrard in their introduction to The Expanding Discourse.

Chapter 1   1 The Bayeux Tapestry, which celebrates William the Conqueror’s conquest of England, remains the earliest example of high-quality embroidery produced on English soil. Even though this textile was likely commissioned by William’s half-brother Bishop Odo, the wool and linen textile is often known as the Queen’s (Matilda’s) Tapestry, an association that underlines the frequent gendering of textile production. The most recent research on the 230-foot-long needlework indicates that it was produced by professional needlewomen. Brown’s The Bayeux Tapestry provides an excellent summary of research on this textile.   2 Jones and Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory, 135–6, 153–4, and Frye, Pens and Needles, 60–74, for thorough discussions of the use of embroidery by Katherine of Aragon, Mary and Elizabeth Tudor, their cousin Mary, Queen of Scots, and her jailer Bess of Hardwick. Also see Geuter, “Reconstructing the Context of Seventeenth-Century English Figurative Embroideries” and Morris, “Needlework Pictures: Their Pedigree and Place in Art.”   3 King and Levey, The Victoria & Albert Museum’s Textile Collection.

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  4 Professional embroiderers of both sexes became renowned for this ornate ecclesiastical needlework named for its country of origin. Their London guild (the Broiderers Guild, which still exists) was formed in 1561, but they met as a group from the late fourteenth century onwards. For more information, see Davies, “Embroiderers and the Embroidery Trade,” 46–7, and Seligman and Hughes, Domestic Needlework.   5 In 1527, the first needlework pattern book was published. Between the 1620s and 1700, more than 150 pattern books appeared in England, which supplemented the use of prints, the Bible, and illuminated manuscripts as source material. The pattern books would not have been off-limits to illiterate women, for they often consisted primarily of images and grids. In Richard Shorleyker’s aptly named A Schole-House for the Needle (1632), for example, he provided patterns for flowers, birds, insects, and fish, as well as grids for the enlargement of this subject matter.   6 Frye, Pens and Needles, 129. As this occurred, wealthy women increasingly outsourced their embroidery projects (gifts, clothing, and larger household items) to professionals.   7 For example, Linwood travelled to the homes of art collectors to copy paintings and, from time to time, to socialize. Singleton’s Inside of a Gentleman’s Study (1793), discussed in the next chapter, depicts such a gathering.   8 Linwood had five brothers and sisters: Matthew (1754–1826), Samuel Whalley (1756–1804), Sarah (later Markland) (1758–1825), John (1760–1840), and William (1766–1848). William was the only Linwood child born in Birmingham.   9 Anonymous, undated account found in Westminster Archive, Manuscript Gardner Collection Group No. 938; Box 42 No. 1 Acc. No. 2194. The family lived near Deritend Bridge in Birmingham. 10 Worsted wool, named after a town near Norwich, is spun from coarse fibers that have been combed to ensure that they all run in the same direction. In the eighteenth century, the Midlands became increasingly attractive to hosiery makers because of taxation on the industry in London. For more on Leicester’s role in this industry, see Patterson, Radical Leicester, 41–62 and Watts, A Walk through Leicester, 99. 11 Patrick, Eighteenth Century Leicester. See entry for August 15, 1767. 12 Whitcomb, Mary Linwood, 1; Winters, “Matthew Linwood.” Matthew Linwood joined his grandfather’s London business in 1779, where he created madeira bottle labels decorated with putti and Bacchanalian masks; some of the labels likely made their way to his father’s wine shop in Leicester. Matthew also owned a shop in Birmingham on Newhall Street that was active between 1781 and 1815, where he specialized in composition spoons and military ornaments. 13 Patterson, Radical Leicester, 1. Until the end of the eighteenth century, Leicester kept its medieval size, and there were only a few houses in much of the area around Belgrave Gate. 14 Payne, A Catalogue of the Whole of the Household Furniture, Plate, Linen, Valuable Collection of Oriental China, Pictures and Prints, Gold and Silver Coins, and Other Effects, of the Late Miss Linwood, on the Premises Belgrave-Gate, Leicester, Which Will Be Sold by Auction, by B. Payne, on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th Days of June, 1845, hereafter known as the Linwood Inventory, 13. The Linwood family’s connections to the metal and linen trades surely helped them obtain their needlework supplies at a discount. At the Priory, art supplies were also kept in the laundry room, which contained a worktable, three painter’s easels,

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two lots of needlework frames, and a large quantity of worsted, which served as the background fabric for Linwood’s embroidery. 15 Linwood Inventory, 7–8, 12–13. On the inventory, each feather bed in the school bedroom is listed with four blankets and two coverlets. This implies a shared sleeping arrangement, which was a step down from the top tier of boarding schools that offered each girl their own. For example, a trade card for the Sloane House boarding school for ladies in Chelsea run by Mrs. Chassaing notes that “Each Lady has a separate bed.” See Lady Smatter, Mrs. Chassaing’s Boarding School, 1797, paper trade card, Pinterest, unknown location, accessed June 24, 2019. https://www.pinterest. com/pin/537054324289328251/?lp=true. 16 On the increase in female literacy, particularly as reflected in book ownership and newspaper circulation, see McIntosh, The Evolution of English Prose, 171. 17 Mason, The Hardware Man’s Daughter, 34; Bermingham, Learning to Draw, 189. Dame (fee paying) schools, where classes were often held in the home of the teacher, were dedicated to daughters of the expanding middle class. During these centuries, charity (free) schools were increasingly available to girls from poorer families. The education of poor children was an outgrowth of the Sunday School movement that fostered the religious education on Sundays. 18 This type of sampler often featured more complicated stitches and was popular both in the British Isles and America. For a fascinating account of these images, see Tyner, Stitching the World. Maps were some of the first embroidery templates printed directly onto a fabric surface. 19 See Bermingham, Learning to Draw, 146, and Vickery, Behind Closed Doors, 234–6. 20 Rousseau, Emile, or, On Education, 368. 21 See Parker, The Subversive Stitch, 120, for a discussion of this topic in Richardson’s Pamela, or, Virtue Rewarded (1740) and the fourth chapter of Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Hivet’s “Needlework and the Rights of Women in England at the End of the Eighteenth Century,” 37–46, provides a useful synthesis of the various views on this topic, although I disagree with her analysis of Linwood’s gallery. 22 Although the Austen family had fallen upon difficult financial times by the late eighteenth century, they were members of the landed gentry for whom needlework was an accomplishment art. There is no record of Austen and Linwood meeting each other, but Linwood owned a first edition of Pride and Prejudice. 23 Selwyn, Jane Austen and Leisure, 66–7; Austen-Leigh, A Memoir of Jane Austen, 87–100. This object (also known as a housewife) indicates how closely needlework was tied to the domestic realm and femininity in the eighteenth century. In 1792, Austen made a needle case housewife for her future sister-in-law, Mary Lloyd. She also wrote the following poem that she slipped into the pocket that spoke to a souvenir of a shared pastime among social equals: “This little bag, I hope, will prove To be not vainly made; For should you thread and needles want, It will afford you aid. And, as we are about to part, “T will serve another end: For, when you look upon this bag, You’ll recollect your friend.” Linwood was skilled at both plain and ornamental needlework. 24 Austen, Sense and Sensibility, Chapters 26, 127; Selwyn, Jane Austen and Leisure, 68–71; and Walker, “Why Was Jane Austen Sent away to School at Seven? An Empirical Look at a Vexing Question.” In the novel, needle cases are also used to suggest the Mrs. Dashwood’s poor character, for she bought them as gifts for the Misses Steele, rather than making them, as the novelist had done for her brother’s

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fiancée. Austen honed her needlework skills at a boarding school in Reading run by a member of her extended family, Mrs. La Tournelle. 25 Embroidery kits first appeared in Europe in 1650. By the eighteenth century, some of the most popular artistic ones were based on The Last Supper after Leonardo, various dogs by Edwin Landseer, and portraits of Mary, Queen of Scots. 26 Brooke, The Lady Lever Art Gallery Catalogue of Embroideries, 96. 27 For more on the relationship between prints and embroidery, see Humphrey, Sampled Lives; Frye, Pens and Needles, 135; D’Oench, “Copper into Gold,” 76; and Clayton, The English Print 1688–1802, 246. 28 Tyner, Stitching the World. Maps were some of the first embroidery templates printed directly onto a fabric surface. 29 See Vickery, “The Theory and Practice of Female Accomplishment,” 94–109 and Behind Closed Doors, 249, as well as Bermingham, Learning to Draw. Both scholars provide sophisticated ways to consider the concepts of craft and amateur in relation to femininity and commercialization. By the end of the eighteenth century, for example, patterns and kits for small-scale embroideries could be purchased at London stores like Ackerman’s Repository of Art on the Strand and the Temple of Fancy on Rathbone Place, which opened in 1794 and 1809 respectively. These stores also provided women with the materials to create other types of amateur art, including watercolor painting, shell work, silhouette, and collage, which ultimately challenged the overall popularity of needlework as an amateur past time in the early nineteenth century. 30 For example, see the entry on Embroidery in Godey’s Lady’s Book, 1:156–7. 31 For a description of these stitches, see Pumora. “14 Hand Embroidery Stitches for Beginners.” 32 See https://charlesrozzell.wordpress.com/. See entries for December 24, 1763, February 13, 1768, July 9, 1768, and March 10, 1770. In the early years of the Priory, Hannah Linwood looked for respected teachers to join her staff. In 1768, she hired a French teacher from Paris who had most recently taught at an eminent school near London. In March of 1770, Mr. Frudd, a well-known Leicester dancing teacher, joined the school. The Priory’s curriculum was in line with other regional boarding schools. For example, in 1785, a Miss Patrick offered young ladies “genteel boarding, English lessons, and careful instruction in every kind of useful and ornamented needle-work” at her school in Petersfield (Hampshire). In 1791, Miss Duffield’s Boarding School near Derby advertised that “the young ladies are genteelly boarded, taught English, with useful and fashionable needlework.” Writing, French, geography, music, drawing, and dancing were also offered “on reasonable Terms.” 33 Llanover, The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, 56. Both Delany and Linwood regularly used work as a synonym for needlework. 34 Customers could also purchase designs and materials for the projects at the boarding school. See for example, the February 13, 1768, entry in Patrick, Eighteenth Century Leicester, accessed May 1, 2019. 35 Matthew Boulton-Anne Boulton, August 17, 1785, in Mason, The Hardware Man’s Daughter, 72. 36 Matthew Boulton and Family Papers (hereafter MBFP), Miscellaneous Accounts, Birmingham Record Office (hereafter BRO). See Gardiner, English Girlhood at School, 343, for tuition rates at Salisbury boarding schools. 37 Hume, “The Value of Money in Eighteenth-Century England,” 377. These figures measure income from 1801. Only 21 percent of these families earned an annual income of between £100 and £200.

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38 J. Priestley to M. Boulton, October 22, 1775, in Jones, “Matthew Boulton, Birmingham and the Enlightenment,” 24. Priestly’s friendship with Boulton was formed in the 1780s, although the two knew each other by reputation in the 1770s. Carl Frederik von Breda’s 1792 portrait of Boulton (now in the Birmingham Museum of Art) depicts both of these areas: his Neo-Palladian home and factory are seen in the background while the coal on the table and the magnifying glass in his left hand signify his professional accomplishments and philosophic interests. 39 M. Boulton to Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, June 4, 1779, in Boulton, Remarks Concerning Certain Pictures, 4–5. In 1779, Boulton approached politician and art patron Wynn (1749–89) to borrow some of his paintings so that he could “make better copies of good originals than can be done otherwise.” Ever the inventor, Boulton was interested in mechanizing the reproduction of paintings for sale, rather than making them by hand as Linwood did. For more information on Boulton’s role in the invention and development of mechanical painting, see Thompson, “Matthew Boulton’s Mechanical Paintings,” 497–507, and more recently, Fogerty, “The Mechanical Paintings of Matthew Boulton and Francis Eginton,” 111–26. 40 For Boulton’s success in the world of polite commerce and social ambitions, see also Russell, James Watt: Making the World Anew, 113, and Jones, “Matthew Boulton, Birmingham, and the Enlightenment,” 19–31. 41 Hannah Linwood to M. Boulton, c. November 1785, MBFP, BRO. 42 Mason, The Hardware Man’s Daughter, 70–1. 43 M. Boulton-A. Boulton, August 6, 1785, in Mason, The Hardware Man’s Daughter, 72. 44 M. Boulton to M. Linwood, n.d., and M. Boulton to M. Linwood, March 17, 1789, MBFP, BRO. 45 H. Linwood to M. Boulton, May 20, 1786, MBFP, BRO. In 1785, Boulton invited Mary and Hannah Linwood to spend Christmas with him in gratitude for his daughter’s care. When his request was turned down, he sent them both gifts instead. 46 M. Boulton to M. Linwood, November 11, 1785, MBFP, BRO. 47 The relationship with Boulton likely brought her some solace in the wake of her father’s 1783 death. 48 December 11, 1786, MBFP, BRO. The midyear to Christmas 1786 bill for Anne contains embroidery supplies such as worsteds for two small pieces (4 shillings) and a work basket (4 shillings). The midsummer 1787 bill includes entries for cloth for a small picture (11 d) and a large picture (£1, 11s, 6d); these likely refer to the background support for embroidery. Ann’s drawing lessons, which were billed separately, required lead pencil with Indian rubber, a lead and hair pencil, two hair pencils, paper, and use of paints. A ledger entry for “100 best pens for Miss Boulton” suggests that Ann was an avid writer. The bills also list fees for travel from Birmingham and dancing lessons, which were likely supplied by outside teachers. 49 For North American examples of the use of prints as a template for embroidery, see Giffen, “Susanna Rowson and Her Academy,” and Cabot, “Engravings as Pattern Sources” and her publications on the Fishing Lady textiles. 50 Tyner, Stitching the World, 31–2; Swain, Historical Needlework, 105. Linwood would have likely connected the pounced lines with a bright colored piece of thread that would be removed after the replica was complete. Through her friendship with Boulton, Linwood may have had access to a pantograph, an expensive tool that could transfer an image as well as changing its size. Leaded paper, a predecessor of carbon paper, could also be used for transferring drawings to a textile surface. This method worked better on silk than tammy cloth. I have not yet found traces of carbon or

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graphite on her textiles, but further chemical testing remains to be done. Iron-on transfers, which were first used in 1875, slowly replaced pouncing. 51 Pencil would not have been effective here, for it would have rubbed off. 52 A practice that is different than embroidering a textile section by section with no common background. 53 Mary Kirby Gregg (1817–93) and Harriet Hilson de Wint (c. 1785–c.1840), both of whom studied with Linwood, recalled reading aloud to their teacher and threading her multiple needles in the Priory’s schoolroom. See Kirby, Leaflets from My Life, 38–9, Whitcomb, n.p., and Roget, A History of the “Old Water-colour” Society, 48. Jean Ingelow’s aunt, whose name is unknown, attended the Priory in the early nineteenth century, where she learned embroidery from Mary and her mother. The aunt’s embroidery, like that of her teachers, was often mistaken for oil painting. For Ingelow’s account, see Mackarness, The Young Lady’s Book, 196–9. 54 Gardiner, Music and Friends, 371; Mackarness, The Young Lady’s Book, 198. Gardiner, a musical composer, was a family friend from Leicester. Linwood’s former student Jean Ingelow repeated many of these details in her reminiscences of her time at the Priory. 55 Mary and Hannah Linwood participated in the Society of Artists exhibitions in 1776, 1778, and 1780. At the 1776 Society of Artists exhibition, Hannah exhibited A Bunch of Grapes and Mary exhibited A Piece of Flowers. The Society of Artists was in operation from 1760 to 1791. The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (now known as the Royal Society of Art) was founded in 1754. Both organizations welcomed a diverse array of media and encouraged innovation in a variety of fields, which made them good exhibition venues for female artists. Most of the women who exhibited there in the 1770s with the Linwoods were also affiliated with boarding schools. Their submissions depicted still life subject matter and were slightly larger than a folio page, suggesting a project that could be easily completed during a boarding school term. 56 This is an estimate, as it is unknown how long it took Linwood to produce a replica. Embroiderers work at different speeds and other factors such as eye fatigue, distractions, the availability of light (either natural or artificial), the size of the work, the actions and length of the wool fibers themselves must also be considered. Linwood’s small to midsize replicas such as the Self-Portrait and Dead Hare were likely completed more quickly than her large ones, like the Woodman after Gainsborough. 57 Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, Transactions of the Society of Arts, vol. 5, 1786. 58 M. Linwood to M. Boulton, April 21, 1787, MBFP, BRO. In this letter, Linwood again mentioned the Empress’ ownership of one of her works but did not specify the exact palace. The specific textiles in the possession of the Johnsons and the Empress were also never mentioned. The architecture and building firm, John Johnson and Son, was located at 32 Berners Ave. For more on them, see Bartlett School of Architecture, “The Berners Estate.” 59 M. Linwood to M. Boulton, April 21, 1789, MBFP, BRO. In this letter, Linwood mentioned a note written earlier that year from a Mr. Tooke of St. Petersburg to one of her friends. The missive reported on the location of Linwood’s picture, but not its subject matter. I have been unable to trace the textile’s provenance. 60 M. Boulton to A. Boulton, March 3, 1770, in Mason, The Hardware Man’s Daughter, 20. In this letter to his wife, Boulton described the queen’s artistic skills and

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patronage: “she draws very fine, she is a great Musician & works with her needle better than Mrs. Betty [the Boultons’ housekeeper] … [she is] very affable & is a patroness of English Manufactorys.” 61 M. Linwood to M. Boulton, March 8, 1787 (draft); MBFP, BRO. For the queen’s support of female artists, see Strobel, “Royal ‘Matronage’ of Women Artists in the Late 18th-Century.” 62 Queen Charlotte’s support of the embroidery industry is well-documented. For over forty years, she donated £500 annually to the School of Embroidering Females, who made the coverings for the queen’s bed. Her donation paid for the costs of boarding and educating six students at the Bedfordshire-based school. For information on the queen’s bed, see Edwards, “‘Such Costly Furniture, Such Beds of State’”; Hedley, Queen Charlotte, 91–2, 318–19; and Phillips, “Queen Charlotte’s Bed.” The queen created needlework gifts for friends like Mary Delany. She also passed her embroidery skills on to several of her daughters. For more on this, see Strobel, The Artistic Matronage of Queen Charlotte, 125–45. The queen’s mother, Princess Elisabeth Albertine of Mirow (1713–61), was also known for her skill with a needle. For example, she embroidered the silk wallpaper for a room in the upper castle at Charlotte’s childhood home in Mirow. 63 M. Linwood to M. Boulton, March 8, 1787 (draft); MBFP, BRO. 64 M. Boulton to M. Linwood, March 17, 1789, MBFP, BRO. 65 Ibid. 66 M. Boulton-A. Boulton, March 28, 1787, in Mason, The Hardware Man’s Daughter, 86. 67 M. Linwood to M. Boulton, March 17, 1789, MBFP, BRO. 68 Ibid. 69 Roberts, Royal Artists, 53–88. 70 M. Linwood to M. Boulton, April 21, 1789, MBFP, BRO. 71 The textiles were placed in the ballroom at Buckingham House where the king saw them the following day, although it does not appear that Linwood was present at the king’s viewing. 72 M. Linwood to M. Boulton, April 21, 1789, MBFP, BRO. 73 Ibid. 74 Russell enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools in 1770 and was elected to Academy in 1789. In 1785 and 1790 respectively, he was appointed Crayon Painter to the Prince of Wales and King George. 75 My discursive description of portraiture relies on Marcia Pointon’s important contributions to the field. Pointon has argued that a portrait should be viewed as an open-ended text, capturing more than a specific moment or a likeness of a human being. For her, “portraiture is a question of the relationship between the self as art and the self in art” and it is always more than a sum of its parts. See Pointon, Hanging the Head, 1, 4, 9, 113. 76 This absence might be compared to contemporaneous images of well-born women embroidering in their homes, such as Reynolds’ Portrait of the Waldegrave Sisters (1780, National Gallery of Scotland), or an image formerly attributed to John Downman, Portrait of Lady Jane Mathew and Her Daughters (1790, Yale Center for British Art). Both images illustrate the practice of needlework as accomplishment art, its social nature, and its role as a signifier of high birth. 77 As the author of a treatise on pastels, Russell very likely suggested the volume’s inclusion, although the L’Art du Brodeur (1770) might have been a more logical choice for the portrait. It is unclear whether Russell or Linwood was familiar with

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79

80 81 82

83 84 85

86

87

88 89

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L’Art du Brodeur, which was written by Charles Germain de Saint-Aubin, a draftsman and embroidery designer to King Louis XV. There is no evidence that Linwood owned a copy of Leonardo’s treatise, nor did she replicate his work. Perhaps the book signaled Linwood’s educational goals with her gallery, which I discuss in subsequent chapters. It may have also referred to Linwood’s role as a teacher of the arts (including embroidery) at the family’s boarding school in Leicester. For examples of this strategy and other female artists, see Perry, “‘The British Sappho,’” 52, 56, and Rosenthal, Angelica Kauffman, 235–6. Russell may have looked to Kauffman’s self-portraits for inspiration, such as her Self Portrait from 1770 (Royal Academy of Arts) or her Self Portrait as Imitatio (1771) (Yale Center for British Art). For a fascinating examination of this type of transformation, see Sheriff, “Seeing Metamorphosis.” Cited in Ingram, “Miss Mary Linwood,” 145. Pliny the Elder, Natural History, Book 35, Chapter 36, 250–2. Pliny describes the contest between fifth-century B.C. Greek painters Zeuxis and Parrhesias to determine artistic supremacy. Parrhesias’ mastery of illusionism was greater than that of his rival, demonstrating his ability to deceive people with his art. Angela Rosenthal eloquently argues that portraiture is intersubjective, as the act of portrayal is a way of bringing selfhood into being. See Angelica Kauffman, 4, 43–75. For a discussion of bodily empiricism, see Smith and Dyer, Material Literacy, 9. The image is one of only three known embroidered portraits made in eighteenthcentury Europe and North America. For an analysis of the three, see Strobel, “Embroidery, Gender, and Self-Portraiture in the Late 18th-Century: Authorship, Agency, and Artistry.” Embroidered self-portraits appear to have been relatively rare in twentieth-century Western art as well. Marguerite Zorach (1887–1968) produced one amidst a series of autobiographical textiles. For a discussion of them, see Fowler, The Modern Embroidery Movement. For the commercial and imitative nature of portraiture, see Pointon, Hanging the Head, 83–4; and Bermingham, “The Origin of Painting and the Ends of Art,” 148. According to Bermingham, the genre was closely aligned with the story of the origin of painting in antiquity that stemmed from the young Corinthian maiden tracing the profile of her young lover. My interpretation of Linwood’s self-portrait is influenced by Sheriff ’s important scholarship in the realm of women artists and portraiture. In “Seeing Beyond the Norm,” 170. Sheriff avows that “we willingly sacrifice some of our potential for challenging received truth when we tether our interpretations to what we imagine visual images meant only for those who controlled the making, receiving, circulating, and interpreting of images. I do not deny that such readings are valid, nor do I deny the control that those in power had over image making. My claim is that this control has never been total.” One of these likely hung in Linwood’s London lodgings; perhaps the other one was seen at the family’s Leicester boarding school. This flexible strategy allowed her to teach at her family’s boarding school for girls in Leicester, thus ensuring the income that she needed to open her gallery. In the late eighteenth century, it was common for needlework teachers to have a second job in a related field. A teacher’s income often fluctuated, for it was based on the number of their students and was also affected by local economic factors. In A Maryland Sampling, 25–9, Allen describes this phenomenon in relation to the colonies and young United States.

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Chapter 2   1 The Pantheon exhibition was open by May 10, 1787, and closed on September 6, 1787.   2 1787 Exhibition Guide, publisher unknown. Its cover page specified that her work was “honored with the most encouraging Commendation from HER MAJESTY and the PRINCESSES” and a crown decorated the last page of the guide.   3 See also the recent publications of Spies-Gans discussed in note 13 of this text’s introduction.   4 For more information on the history of thread, see Sykas, “Re-threading: Notes Towards a History of Sewing Thread in Britain,” 123–36.   5 For the role of wool in Leicester, see Fussell and Goodman, “Eighteenth Century Estimates.”   6 Johnson, Glimpses of Ancient Leicester, 342; Sivers, “The Curious Art of Mary Linwood,” 89. Many secondary sources report that the tammy cloth was 32-count, meaning that the weft and weave were quite small, accommodating 32 squares per inch.   7 See Beaudry, Findings, 44–55, for a detailed history of the needle.   8 By the end of the eighteenth century, the price of specialty needles had dropped, in part due to an available workforce, many of whom were displaced agricultural workers in search of employment.   9 Dias, “‘A World of Pictures’.” 10 M. Linwood to M. Boulton, March 8, 1787 (draft), MBFP, BRO. In this letter to Boulton, Linwood wrote that “a Gentlemen [unidentified] in Town who is so obliging as to be my Agent, writes me, he thinks he can procure a suitable Room in PallMall—which is a situation I much approve, but I must pay Rent for it from Lady-Day. which is the reason I wish not the Exhibition pospon’d [sic] and that I thus beg the favour of your early attention.” 11 All the textiles that were shown to the Royal Couple were included in the Pantheon exhibition the following month. 12 The building was demolished in 1937. Other buildings have been built on the spot, whose current address is 173 Oxford Street. 13 The four-page exhibition guide was included in the price of admission. 14 For more on the “Britishness” of landscape painting, see Bermingham, Landscape and Ideology (especially the introduction & pg. 9); Barrell, The Dark Side of the Landscape; Kriz, The Idea of the English Landscape Painter (especially 33–56); Daniels, Fields of Vision; and Lowenthal, “British National Identity and the English Landscape.” 15 In 1757, Bond became the head of the ornamental department at the Soho Manufactory. For more on the artist, see Grant, A Chronological History, 167–8. 16 Cozens taught Princes William and Edward and held his appointment from 1778 until his death in 1786. 17 For more on Cozens’s publication and its explanation of the blot method, see Wilton, The Art of Alexander and John Robert Cozens, 31–5. 18 The Linwood Gallery of Pictures in Needle-Work and a Biographical Sketch of the Painters, 29–30. 19 For example, see the works on paper listed on the Linwood Inventory, 28. 20 On the role of portraiture in the early years of the Royal Academy, see Pointon, “‘Portrait!’ ‘Portrait! ‘Portrait!’,” 93–7, and Hanging the Head.

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21 Rosenthal, Angelica Kauffman, 202–4. Angelica Kauffman, for example, depicted the tale of the doomed lovers in a series of four roundels produced in the late 1770s. 22 While Opie’s work is listed as a painting on the Linwood Inventory (pg. 30), it was very likely a print. 23 This ad was included in the following newspapers: World and Fashionable Advertiser (London, England), June 15, 1787; Issue 143. See also World and Fashionable Advertiser (London, England), June 14, 1787; Issue 142, and the Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser (London, England), June 9, 1787; Issue 5640. 24 The fee included a catalogue, whose numbers corresponded to the placement of textiles throughout her exhibition; the publication was in lieu of wall placards. 25 See Elliott, A History of English Advertising, 146–50; and Morrison, History of the Times, 44–7. Gordon Phillips, a former archivist of The Times, explains the lack of such financial information thus: “historical records are seldom if ever found in a busy newspaper office, where contemporary events are paramount and the past is left to look after itself.” See “Advertising and the Times,” 26–7. According to Hemingway, Landscape Imagery and Urban Culture, 106, conservative interests kept the price of newspapers high to keep unpropertied classes from reading them on a regular basis, a practice that ultimately failed. 26 See Hume, “The Value of Money in Eighteenth-Century England.” Hume calculated the disposable income for various classes based on figures compiled by lateeighteenth-century historians, as well as diaries and letters from the period. Hume estimates that the necessities of food, shelter, and clothing averaged about 87.5 percent of their annual income. An even smaller percentage of British families (7 percent) earned more than £100 a year. 27 Linwood’s housing costs may have been minimal since she lived at the Priory for most of the year. Her transportation expenses, however, were considerable, as she traveled between London and Leicester on a regular basis. 28 See London Chronicle (London, England), May 10–12, 1787; Issue 4754; Public Advertiser (London, England), April 24, 1787; Issue 16,513; and the General Evening Post (London, England), May 10–12, 1787; Issue 8340. 29 The admission price was also comparable to an inexpensive seat at the Drury Lane and Covent Garden theaters. 30 For more information on the success of this price as an exclusionary practice, see my calculations on the cost of Linwood’s advertising in this chapter, as well as Dias, “‘A World of Pictures’,” 96, and Waterfield et al., Palaces of Art, 131. The Shakespeare Gallery offered its subscribers free tickets to view the paintings. 31 M. Linwood to Mr./Mrs. Sims, December 15, 1796, National Art Library, Special Collections, 86.WW.1, V & A Museum. While busy with the preparations for the Hanover Square exhibition, Linwood was in close communication with Mr. & Mrs. Sims about their daughter’s school projects at the Priory. 32 Ingram, “Miss Mary Linwood,” 146. 33 O’Day, “Family Galleries,” 327; Walpole, Anecdotes of Painting, 3: 719–20. Other women who were known for their high-quality embroidered copies of famous paintings include a Miss Gray (later wife of Philip Lloyd, Dean of Norwich). According to Walpole, her needlework copy of a van Dyck painting sold for £300. Mrs. Phillip Lybbe Powys, who later visited Linwood’s Hanover Square exhibition, also travelled to Miss Gray’s home to view her work. Caroline Conway (Lady Aylesbury)’s textile copy after Velasquez’s The Spinners was similarly well known. In

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Yorkshire, Anne Morritt made needlework copies of painting in her family home, where they were (and still are) viewed by a handful of visitors. Elizabeth Wicksteed Worlidge, the wife of painter and etcher Thomas Worlidge (1700−66), created embroidered landscapes. 34 Jourdain, The History of English Secular Embroidery, 174. Linwood kept his large Woodman from 1797 to 1800, long after Noel’s 1798 death. 35 Henry Noel to Elizabeth Noel, September 18, 1792, DE3214/10493, Records of the Noel family, The Record Office for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland. 36 For example, see Reynolds’s Discourse II, 92–3, in which he describes “general copying as a delusive kind of industry; the student satisfies himself with the appearance of doing something; he falls into the dangerous habit of imitating without selecting, and of labouring without any determinate object; as it requires no effort of the mind, he sleeps over his work.” 37 Kauffman often utilized allegorical language to cushion her involvement in the primarily masculine London art world. Well-known examples include her SelfPortrait as the Muse of Painting (1787, Uffizi) and Self-Portrait between the Arts of Music and Painting (1794–6, Nostell Priory). Rather than using allegorical language, a recently discovered c. 1770–1 self-portrait by Moser in the Museum Zu Allerheiligen, Sturzenegger-Stiftung, Schaffhausen, seems to pay homage to previous female painters. It was created as a copy of (or possible prototype for) George Romney’s c. 1770–1 portrait of her in the National Portrait Gallery. In a pose reminiscent of Judith Leyster’s 1630 Self-Portrait, Moser pauses from the still life painting on her easel and confidently meets the viewer’s gaze. 38 Based on the newspaper coverage surrounding the presentation of the Leicester military standard, it seems as if Linwood stayed at Enderby sometime in late 1793 or early 1794, but the exact dates of Linwood’s time there are unclear. No visitors’ log from Enderby Hall survives. 39 Fountain, “A Leicestershire Squire,” 2–4. Loraine Smith was the second son of Sir Charles Loraine and Dorothy Millott of Kirkhare in Northumberland. At the age of eleven, he inherited Enderby Hall in Leicestershire from his uncle Richard Smith. Loraine Smith was an MP for Leicester between 1784 and 1790. While in this role, he gave several speeches against the slave trade. He also served as High Sheriff of Leicestershire from March of 1783 to March of 1784. 40 1794 Royal Academy exhibition catalogue, Inside of a Gentleman’s Study, with Portraits (no. 300), and Leicestershire Farmer and Portrait of a Lady Spinning, 1793, Royal Academy exhibition catalogue, nos. 116 and 537. Loraine Smith enjoyed a lengthy professional relationship with Singleton, who exhibited portraits of him at the Royal Academy in 1803, 1814, and 1834. 41 See Retford, The Conversation Piece: Making Modern Art in 18th-Century Britain, 31, who argues that imaginary gatherings can also be considered conversation pieces. 42 Farrell-Skeffington served as colonel in the Calvary and was deputy Lieutenant for the county of Leicester. Farrell-Skeffington proudly sports the scarlet uniform of the Yeomanry in portraits by George Engleheart (unfinished, 1792) and Samuel Drummond (1794). See Aronson and Wieseman, A Perfect Likeness, 159. The current location of Drummond’s portrait is unknown. For more information on it and the Yeomanry uniform, see also http://www.paoyeomanry.co.uk/PM/ LYPre1800.htm. 43 The Leicester Herald, August 21, 1794.

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44 Gentlemen’s Magazine 64: 2 (September 1794): 857–9; Fountain, “A Leicestershire Squire,” 5. According to a contemporary account, the ballroom (at the request of the corps) was “ornamented under the direction of Miss Linwood; the decorations of which were in a style and elegance peculiar to herself, whose loyalty and taste throughout this occasion reflect equal honor on herself and the corps.” 45 Linwood’s image of Skeffington Hall was engraved by John Cary (c. 1754–1835) and published in the third volume of John Nichols, History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester. 46 I am grateful to Carolyn Day and Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell for helping me identify this hat. A slightly earlier version of this hat is seen in The Harpist by Jean Antoine Theodore Giroust (1791) (Dallas Museum of Art). 47 For the political meanings associated with the chapeau à la Paméla, see Feilla, “Performing Virtue” and Muret, “Politics on the Stage.” Such hats were in vogue in both France and England in the late 1780s and became even more popular following an August 1793 performance of Paméla in France. 48 In the novel, Pamela fights off the advances of her employer, a Mr. B. Before leaving his household, she embroiders a waistcoat for him so that he will provide her with a good reference. Through her upright behavior, Pamela encourages Mr. B to change his own. He does so, and eventually asks for her hand in marriage. 49 Public Record Office, Kew, PROB 11/1859/391. A Litter of Foxes and Inside of a Gentleman’s Study remained particularly significant to Loraine Smith, for they are listed individually in his will, unlike the rest of his artwork, most of which went to various family members and servants. His son, the Reverend Loraine Smith, inherited A Litter of Foxes, while his nephew William inherited Singleton’s painting. 50 See Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 184–5, on fox hunting as a British sport. Loraine Smith fully participated in the local hunting circles by serving as deputy Master of the Quorn, one of the world’s oldest fox hunting packs. 51 Linwood Inventory, 30. Linwood also owned several animal paintings by John Ferneley, a close friend of both Loraine Smith and Morland. 52 Frizelle, The Life and Times, 66; Frizelle and Martin, The Leicester Royal Infirmary, 76; Star (London): January 1, 1795; Issue 1987. The play was held in December of 1793. 53 Farington, The Diary of Joseph Farington, vol. 3, 714. 54 The building was well known to the royal couple, who attended the concerts there so regularly that there was a room set aside for them called the Queen’s Tea Room. The building was located on the east side of the square, at the southeastern corner of Hanover Street. 55 Farington, The Diary of Joseph Farington, vol. 3, 714. 56 The building that housed the Hanover Square assembly rooms was torn down in 1900. Even if Linwood had wanted to display her works again at the Pantheon, she would have been unable to, for a fire destroyed the building in January of 1792. 57 The main room was decorated by Giovanni Battista Cipriani’s paintings of artistic putti, images that also appeared on admission tickets to the building. 58 Gainsborough was close friends with Johann Christian Bach and Carl Friedrich Abel, two of the proprietors of the Hanover Square Concert Rooms. The painter often used transparencies to plan the composition of a painting. For more on his use of this visual technology, see Bermingham, Sensation & Sensibility, 23–5, and “Technologies of Illusion.” 59 Linwood Inventory, 31. Linwood owned Gilpin’s Observations, Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty, Made in the Year 1776, on Several Parts of Great Britain;

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Particularly the High-lands of Scotland (1789) and Three Essays: On Picturesque Beauty; on Picturesque Travel; and on Sketching Landscape: To Which Is Added a Poem, on Landscape Painting (1792). 60 For a thorough discussion of cultural patriotism in relation to Boydell’s endeavors, see Dias, Exhibiting Englishness and “‘A World of Pictures’,” 110–11, particularly in relation to Boydell’s desire to make high art (e.g., history painting) available to the public. Cynthia Roman provides a good overview to Bowyer’s project in “Robert Bowyer’s Historic Gallery.” The proximity of Bowyer, Boydell, and Macklin’s galleries, all within a stone’s throw of each other on Pall Mall, surely created a competitive environment of display. 61 The Morning Post, April 11, 1788, quoted in Calé, “Maria Cosway’s Hours,” 222. For a general overview to the commemorative galleries, most of which were in or around Pall Mall, see Murgia, “From Private to National.” 62 See Hedquist, “How a Lost Painting Endured,” 260–3, for a discussion of Linwood’s copies of works in the Poets Gallery. 63 Linwood Inventory, 25–7. Most of the poetry in the 1798 guide is included in Anderson’s Lives of the Poets (1795) which she owned. Other key works in her library include Bell’s Poets of Great Britain Complete from Chaucer to Churchill (1776), Johnson’s Lives of the Poets, Pope’s Works, Cowper’s Poems, and Boyer’s [sic] Dictionary, likely Bowyer’s History of England (1795). 64 Wright traveled in Italy between 1773 and 1775 and created at least thirty views of the volcano. 65 Powys, Passages from the Diaries, 300–1. 66 See the Times (London, England), March 31, 1798; Issue 4158; True Briton (1793) (London, England), March 20, 1798; Issue 1634; Morning Chronicle (London, England), March 14, 1798; Issue 8987; and the Morning Post and Gazetteer (London, England), March 10, 1798; Issue 910. The Morning Post, the leading fashionable paper of the period, often expressed aristocratic and royalist sentiments. For a discussion of the conservative leanings of this newspaper, see Hemingway, Landscape Imagery and Urban Culture, 110. 67 From the London Times (London, England), October 14, 1798; Issue 4308. The show was open six days a week from 9am to 7pm. 68 See the Sun (London, England), September 9, 1799; Issue 2173; May 29, 1800, and May 30, 1800 Morning Post and Gazetteer (Issue 9896), the July 7, 1800 Times (Issue 4840), and the Morning Chronicle (Issue 9879). Linwood’s ads are often found next to those for Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, also suggesting a common clientele. 69 See the Morning Chronicle (London, England), August 1, 1798; Issue 9107 and Evening Mail (London, England), January 29–31, 1800, for examples of the first and the Morning Chronicle (London, England), May 12, 1800; Issue 9663, for an announcement of new portraits and textiles. 70 M. Linwood to M. Boulton, February 6, 1798, MBFP, BRO. The queen presumably visited the venue in March or April of that year, although I have found no references to the visit in the queen’s extant papers. Boulton also visited the show in its first months, although the exact date of his visit remains unclear. In this letter, Linwood asked him to spread the word of her exhibition among his circle in London. 71 On April 18, 1798, Farington noted that there were about forty people in the main gallery at 3pm. See vol. 3, entries 1000 and 1004 (April 27, 1798) and the Farington papers, Royal Academy of Arts, London.

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72 Knapp, An Artist’s Love Story, 86–8. Unfortunately, Siddons wrote nothing more about the exhibition. 73 William Godwin visited the Milton Gallery, the Panorama, and Linwood’s Gallery all within a few days in June of 1799. William Godwin’s Diary, University of Oxford, accessed September 23, 2019. http://godwindiary.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/events/indexexhib.html. 74 Feltham, The Picture of London for 1803, 219. 75 From the London Times (London, England), May 14, 1798; Issue 4195. 76 See the May 29, 1800, Morning Post and Gazetteer (Issue 9896) and the May 30, 1800 Morning Chronicle (Issue 9879). Thompson’s ticket price also included a guide to her exhibition. 77 Diary of Charles Townley, TY1/12, Townley Archive, British Museum, September 30 and October 3, 1799, entries. Townley describes Cosway’s portrait of Linwood in the September 30 entry. The Minerva does not correspond to any of Linwood’s known replicas. 78 The Linwood portrait is listed No. 548, Royal Academy catalogue, Honorary Section. Cosway exhibited a total of eight works there that year: three other portraits, a landscape, and several allegorical and literary figures. 79 Barnett, Richard and Maria Cosway, 143–55. After closing the London school, Cosway operated ones in Lyon, France and Lodi, Italy. Linwood’s companionship likely also brought Cosway solace after the loss of her only child, daughter Louisa, in July of 1796. 80 Cosway’s painting is now only known through Bartolozzi’s 1792 stipple engraving. 81 Linwood Inventory, 29. Linwood also owned a colored print of Cosway’s Amanthis, a character in a play by Elizabeth Inchbald (1753–1821). 82 Ibid., 27. Linwood owned a three-volume collection of Pope’s verse. 83 Between 1801 and 1803, Cosway traveled to Paris alone and worked on another project with two other prominent women, professional engraver Caroline Watson and Mary “Perdita” Robinson, one of the mistresses of the Prince of Wales. 84 Borzello, Seeing Ourselves, 112–13; Cheney, Faxon, and Russo, Self-Portraits by Women Painters, 140–1. 85 Vigée-Le Brun’s well-known Self Portrait of 1790 (Metropolitan Museum of Art) depicts the artist in a turban; there are plenty of portraits of male artists in them. 86 ArtNet, “Portrait présumé de Miss Mary Linwood.” 87 The portrait seems to have been begun as an oval composition. It stayed with Cosway until her death. The image is currently in private hands, where multiple attempts to obtain information about its provenance have been unsuccessful. 88 Now known only through Valentine Green’s mezzotint (Royal Collection). 89 Fleming-Williams, ed., John Constable: Further Documents and Correspondence, 69, 71. Mary’s brother Samuel Whalley Linwood (1756–1804) may have been the person who brought Linwood and Constable together. The Whalley middle name here perhaps indicates a close friendship between the Linwoods and the Whalley family of Newcastle. Mary Linwood’s youngest brother William (1766–1848) was also close to the Whalleys. Constable’s sister Martha married Nathaniel Whalley; they were Alicia’s parents. Nathaniel Whalley visited the Hanover Square exhibition in 1798 and 1801. Linwood visited the Whalleys in Fenton in 1801; Constable was there between July 23, and November 17, 1801. 90 Leslie, Memoirs of the Life of John Constable, 12. On January 8, 1802, Constable wrote his good friend and mentor John Dunthorne (1770–1844) from London, “I have

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done little in the painting art since I have been in town yet. A copy of a portrait and a background to an ox for Miss Linwoodis all. I have not time to say half I could wish about my Derby shire excursion, therefore I will say nothing.” Constable’s Royal Academy debut occurred in 1802, when he exhibited A Landscape.   91 Leslie, Memoirs of the Life of John Constable, 108. Alicia was at the Priory in 1823.   92 Vasari’s emphasis is not surprising given the fact that he was a driving force behind the establishment of the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno.   93 The term “professional” came into common use during the medieval era to describe members of various guilds dedicated to sculpture and painting. The formation of various national artistic academies from the sixteenth century onwards gradually changed the meaning of the term professional to include the type of formal training that was available to the predominantly male artists at these institutions. This specialized education with its Classical roots differed from the type of experiential learning (often apprenticeships) offered in the guilds.   94 For most of the twentieth century, craft has been thought of as a feminine pursuit, as opposed to the more masculine arena of fine art.   95 See my introduction for this prohibition.   96 Sloan, “A Noble Art,” 7. Various early-nineteenth-century editions of Johnson’s Dictionary share this definition of amateur. In 1803, the Cyclopædia: Or, Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences and Literature first defined artistic amateur “as a foreign term introduced and now passing current amongst us, to denote a person understanding, and loving or practicing the polite arts of painting, sculpture, or architecture, without any regard to pecuniary advantage.” Heer’s essay “Amateur Artists in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries” is also a helpful resource; Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “amateur,” 2017, https://www-oed-com.libproxy.evansville. edu/view/Entry/6041?redirectedFrom=amateur#eid.   97 For an extended treatment of the term amateur and the related designation of dilettante, see Redford, Dilettant, 1–4.   98 Sloan points out the absence of the term from art manuals or advertisements for drawing lessons.   99 See Yarrington, “The Female Pygmalion,” 89; The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal, 1828, 24, part III, 319, cited in Yarrington; Cunningham, Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, 4: 251; and Yarrington, “Anne Seymour Damer,” 81–99. Damer’s artistic successes are well known, in large part because of her privileged aristocratic background which provided her with educational and economic opportunities that were not available to most other female artists. Damer has often been described as an amateur because of her honorary status at the Royal Academy and family background. Yarrington argues for a more expansive definition of professional artist, contending that Damer’s continual engagement with and participation in the fine arts should qualify her as one, an assessment with which Damer’s first biographer would have agreed. Cunningham writes that she pursued art “not as an amusement, but as the business of her life.” 100 It was expected that once women married, they would cease exhibiting art publicly and only do so in the private or amateur realm, essentially relegating them to amateur status. This added to the conflation of amateur and accomplishment art. 101 See Bermingham, Learning to Draw, passim; and Vickery, Behind Closed Doors, 231–49; 290. For an extended treatment of the term amateur and the related designation of dilettante, see Redford, Dilettanti, 1–4.

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102 The career of musician Elizabeth Ann Linley (1754–92) comes to mind. After their marriage, playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816) would not let his wife perform in public. Gainsborough’s 1787 portrait of her alone in the countryside evokes some of the wistfulness of her lost opportunities. 103 Draper, “‘Her Painting of Apricots’,” especially 395, 400, and “Mary Beale.” Beale is also the subject of a recent biography by Penelope Hunting, My Dearest Heart. The career of Anna Maria Garthwaite (1688–1763) also transitioned from that of amateur to a professional artist. See Anishlanslin, Portrait of a Woman in Silk, 44. 104 Beale’s father John Cradock was very likely her first teacher. Both he and his daughter had amateur and professional periods during their lifetimes. He was admitted to the London Company of Painter-Stainers in 1648, a sign of the growing importance of his artistic career. 105 Draper, “‘Her Painting of Apricots’: The Invisibility of Mary Beale (1633–1699),” 392. 106 Two other events ensured Beale’s professional success: she was included in Sir William Sanderson’s drawing and painting treatise, and she befriended Sir Peter Lely, court painter to Charles II. Lely painted members of Beale’s family, lent her work to replicate, and recommended her to his friends. This augmented her already considerable social and professional network, a strategy that Linwood later employed. 107 Draper, “Mary Beale and Art’s Lost Laborers,” 150–1. Rosemary O’Day’s work has also been helpful to my examination of the early modern period in London. In “Family Galleries,” she argues that Cassandra Willoughby Brydges, first Duchess of Chandos (1670–1735), also worked in both the amateur and professional realms. She likewise questions the public and private divide often associated with professionals and amateurs, respectively. 108 Baxandall, “The Period Eye.” 109 OED Online, s.v. “profession, n.,” accessed October 4, 2018. http://www.oed.com. libproxy.evansville.edu/view/Entry/152052?redirectedFrom=profession#eid. I have also used a secondary criterion of five or more known works for my definition of professional status. Because the loss of some artwork is to be expected for most artists, this number is likely indicative of prolonged achievement. Quantifying artistic output or the number of artists has its limitations, however, as I argue in the conclusion to this book. 110 The attention to Academy membership in Singleton’s portrait is particularly striking. Although he attended the Royal Academy schools and exhibited there, he never achieved membership, having been twice rejected for Associateship in 1807 and 1811. Singleton’s image appears to have been produced for Charles Bestland, a printmaker and dealer, who published a print of it in 1800. Singleton also produced a 1793 study (in the collection of the British Museum) for the oil painting in which Moser and Kauffman play a less prominent role, for they are located to the right of giant fireplace. He may have found this image to be less successful compositionally, as it appears slightly unbalanced and with a gap in front of the room’s fireplace. 111 From left to right, the works of art included in Singleton’s painting are: cast of Menelaus, cast of the Belvedere Torso, Portrait of George III by Reynolds, Christ Blessing Little Children by West, Spring and Summer by Moser, Study for an Equestrian Statue of George III by Carlini, Portrait of Queen Charlotte by Reynolds, cast of the Borghese Gladiator, cast of the Laocoön, Self-Portrait by Reynolds, The Tribute Money by Copley, Architectural Elevation by John Yenn, Portrait of

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Dr. William Hunter by Mason Chamberlin, cast of the Venus de Medici, cast of the Dog of Alcibiades, and cast of the Apollo Belvedere. The painting partially shown in the top right corner is John Francis Rigaud’s Samson and Delilah. Reynolds’s SelfPortrait (seen in the upper right) is believed to have been painted specifically to hang in the Academy’s new Assembly Room as a pendant to his portrait of Sir William Chambers, the architect of Somerset House and Treasurer of the Royal Academy. See Royal Academy, “The Royal Academicians in General Assembly, 1795, Henry Singleton (1766–1839),” accessed July 17, 2018. https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/ art-artists/work-of-art/the-royal-academicians-in-general-assembly-1, and Simon, The Royal Academy of Arts, 176–7, for an analysis of the anachronistic elements in Singleton’s painting. 112 These two images, along with Color and Invention, symbolize the four elements of art and are represented by female figures in Kauffman’s images. All four are now in the entrance hall ceiling of Burlington House. Disegno, which depicts a female allegorical figure sketching a cast of the Belvedere Torso, dovetails with the cast of the same artwork seen to the left of Singleton’s painting. 113 Several members of Singleton’s family participated in Academy exhibitions as nonmembers, including his sisters Sarah and Maria, which may in part account for his nuanced depictions of Kauffman and Moser. Sarah (later Macklarinan) and Maria Singleton exhibited miniatures at the Royal Academy from 1787 to 1806 and 1808 to 1820, respectively. Joseph participated in Academy exhibitions between 1773 and 1788. In 1807, Singleton married the only daughter of his cousin William Singleton (d. c. 1810); she also exhibited at the British Institution exhibitions of 1808, 1809, and 1810. 114 This point was made by Angela Rosenthal in Angelica Kauffman, 158, and Elizabeth Eger in Bluestockings, 49. 115 Millar, The Late Georgian Pictures, 152. A founding member of the Royal Academy, Zoffany created the painting for George III in part to celebrate his role in the establishment of this institution. Like Zoffany’s earlier group portrait, Singleton’s image contains portraits of most of the current Academy members in 1795. Even though Kauffman is seen in Singleton’s group portrait, she had returned to Rome in 1781. 116 Carlini’s statuette was in the first Academy exhibition in 1769 and Reynolds’s portraits of the royal couple were part of the first exhibition in Somerset House eleven years later. 117 Singleton reproduced one more work apiece by Kauffman and Moser than West in his painting; only Reynolds had one more than these three artists. Christ Blessing Little Children by West hangs above him. Moser’s Spring and Summer are below it and behind Carlini’s statue, and the still-lifes represent both the genre for which she was best known and her avenue to royal patronage. 118 For example, see Parker and Pollock, Old Mistresses, 87–90. 119 See Chadwick, Women, Art, and Society; Gaze, Dictionary of Women Artists; Hyde, “Women in the Visual Arts in the Age of Marie-Antoinette”; Spies-Gans, “Exceptional, but Not Exceptions”; Vickery, “Hidden from History”; and Yeldham, “Women Artists in Nineteenth-Century France and England.” There are several figures for women’s participation in London and Paris. In her sample year of 1777, Vickery estimates that 8 percent of the exhibitors at the Royal Academy exhibition were women who exhibited seven percent of the 364 paintings. According to SpiesGans, 700 women artists exhibited over 3600 works in the major exhibitions in London and Paris between 1769 and 1830.

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120 Draper, “Mary Beale (1633–1699),” and “Mary Beale and Art’s Lost Laborers.” 121 Patience Wright (1725–1786) was the first female gallery owner in London. She opened her waxworks in 1772 and it remained open for most of the decade. For more on Wright, See Bellion, “Patience Wright’s Transatlantic Bodies,” 15–47.

Chapter 3   1 Robinson and Craciun, “Present State of the Manners,” 119. In this essay, Robinson celebrated the city for its political and cultural advances that cut across gender and class lines. It was first published in the reformist Monthly Magazine, edited by Richard Phillips, who became well-known for his London guidebooks.   2 M. Boulton to M. Linwood, January 15, 1803, MS3782/12, MBFP, BRO, “Sketch of Miss Linwood’s Wants for the New Rooms in Piccadilly,” n.p.   3 From Morning Chronicle (London, England), May 12, 1800; Issue 9663. The ad read: “HANOVER SQUARE CONCERT ROOMS MISS LINWOOD’S EXHIBITION, is now open, and will continue every day, with Sundays excepted, from Nine o’Clock in the Morning til Evening. The additions this season are: the Woodman, from the celebrated Picture of Gainsborough, in a room adapted for its reception. In Wool, the Head of the above Woodman; and Miss Linwood’s Portrait, from a Painting by Hoppner.” The Hoppner portrait was not exhibited at the Academy and instead went straight to Linwood’s gallery upon its completion.   4 The embroidered portrait after Russell was included in the 1810, 1830, and 1840 exhibitions at Leicester Square.   5 Farington, The Diary of Joseph Farington, vol. 2, 356 (August 12, 1795) and vol. 3, 714 (December 9, 1796). Benjamin West told Farington that “he considered Hoppner in every respect at the Head of his department of the art.” Also see John Human Wilson, “The Life and Work of John Hoppner (1758–1810).”   6 Hoppner painted a portrait of Mary Benwell (1739–after 1800); both his motherin-law and Benwell created portraits of Queen Charlotte. His parents were both German, a linguistic skill that came in handy at the English court, where his mother was an attendant.   7 No documentation about Hoppner’s portrait of Linwood survives. In the nineteenth century, this amount was roughly equivalent to £26 then or £3136 in today’s currency.   8 One notable exception is Hoppner’s portrait of The Frankland Sisters, now in the National Gallery of Art, London. Amelia (1777–1800) and Marianne (1778–95) Frankland were amateur artists, as was their father Sir Thomas Frankland (1750–1831). In 1795, he commissioned this portrait that was exhibited at the Royal Academy of 1797. In the image, Amelia’s hands hold a porte-crayon and bulging portfolio while Marianne clasps a piece of paper (perhaps a print or drawing) in her left hand, which is casually draped over her sister’s shoulders. Linwood and Amelia Frankland are depicted in an almost identical way, for they share the same pose and facial expression. In the double portrait, the aristocratic sisters sport white gowns adorned with matching blue sashes and ties; Marianne’s lightly powdered hair is decorated with a blue bow, while Amelia wears a fashionable turban. For more on the Frankland family, see Sloan, “A Noble Art,” 248.   9 Few of Linwood’s own landscape paintings survive, but one of her watercolors came on the market in 1968. The River Landscape was sold that year at Christie’s to an unknown buyer.

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10 See Groves, The History of Needlework Tools and Accessories, 59, for the use of these clamps, which were often paired to stretch the skein of thread between them. By 1825, ready-to-use sewing thread (in balls or on wooden wheels) began to be manufactured. Even after this development, the clamps were not discarded, as they could be used for holding thread. 11 For example, see Hoppner, “Portrait of Anne Garbett Lady Romilly” for the image of Lady Romilly (private collection) and “Thomas Williams,” for the portrait of Williams, which is in the collection of the National Library of Wales. 12 Compare this image, for example, to Hoppner’s portrait of Miss Fisher from c. 1800–05 (Indianapolis Museum of Art), whose white gown is adorned with a translucent neckline that features several bows and a gold stickpin. Miss Fisher’s coral necklace, earrings, stickpin, and elaborate hairstyle are in stark contrast to Linwood’s more austere appearance. 13 I thank Amelia Rauser for this point. See Rauser, “From the Studio to the Street” and Memoirs of Elizabeth Vigée-LeBrun, trans. Strachey, 22, cited in Rauser. Additional examples of this type of clothing include Kauffman’s Self-Portrait (National Portrait Gallery, 1770–5) and Self-Portrait as the Muse of Painting (Galleria degli Uffizi, 1787), as well as the written descriptions of clothing worn by Emma Hamilton and Elizabeth Vigée-LeBrun. Linwood’s clothing is also in line with the classicizing and less temporally specific that Reynolds suggested to painters in his Discourse VII (1776). 14 The details surrounding Westall’s portrait of Linwood are mostly unknown. 15 Linwood Inventory, 29; Linwood Catalogue, 1812, 22–3. Linwood’s Woman and Child was hung between Gainsborough’s Girl and Cat in the Cottage and Woodman in the Storm in the Ruins. 16 Mannings, Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1: 79–80. Beauclerk served as Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Charlotte between 1762 and 1768. She drew crayon portraits and illustrated two books. Along with Elizabeth Templeton (1746/7–1823), Beauclerk (1734–1808) supplied Josiah Wedgwood with drawings that were incorporated into his pottery. Westall’s portrait also resembles Gainsborough’s 1787 portrait of Elizabeth Ann Linley, Mrs. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and Thomas Lawrence’s Portrait of Emma Hamilton as La Penserosa (1791–2). Westall and Lawrence lived together between 1790 and 1795. 17 The Hobday and Boulton families were both engaged in the manufacture of metal objects. Hobday also enjoyed a close friendship with George Morland, whose portrait he painted in 1803. 18 Royal Academy Catalogue, no. 39. 19 Tomkins is listed as both the printer and the publisher of the portrait. It was published in London on April 29, 1806. A short note (dated July 16, 1797) to Tomkins from Linwood is in the Getty Collection: Linwood, Mary. Mary Linwood Miscellaneous Papers, 1797, 1797, http://hdl.handle.net/10020/860525_d297. 20 The portrait of Linwood was not part of Royal Academy exhibitions of 1798, 1799, or 1800. It may have been the portrait that Beechey exhibited in 1801 as a Portrait of a Lady (no. 233). Ridley worked as an illustrator for a variety of magazines. 21 Linwood to Hill, November 22, 1799, 24D53/1, The Record Office for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland. 22 The image was later reused in an 1817 article (imp. ser. 6:181) on Linwood in the Ladies Monthly Museum, and in an 1821 article in La Belle Assemblée, a British women’s magazine published from 1806 to 1837.

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23 Linwood to Hill, November 22, 1799, 24D53/1, The Record Office for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland. 24 Linwood to Hill, c. December 1799, 24D53/1, The Record Office for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland. 25 Ridley’s print was published by Vernon & Hood on January 31, 1800, and appeared in issue 9:1 of the Monthly Mirror (1800). 26 London Evening Mail (London, England), January 29–31, 1800, no issue. 27 “A Biographical Sketch of Miss Linwood with a Portrait,” Monthly Mirror 9:1 (January 1800), 7. 28 Ibid. She is also favorably compared to the more modest efforts of fellow embroiderers Mary Knowles and Lady Yates (d. 1808), who made textile copies of some of Reynolds’ paintings. Yates was married to the distinguished jurist Sir Joseph Yates (1722–70). 29 Ibid., 8. 30 The article also recounts an undocumented but exciting interaction with Catherine the Great and her agents that supposedly resulted in the placement of one of Linwood’s textiles in an imperial palace. 31 London Evening Mail (London, England), January 29–31, 1800, no issue. 32 Jessop’s copy of her husband’s portrait of Boulton was exhibited at the 1799 Royal Academy exhibition. See National Portrait Gallery, “Matthew Boulton,” https://www. npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp00505/matthew-boulton. 33 This issue was dedicated to educational topics such as the biography of women and history as a proper subject of female study. 34 “Miss Linwood with a Portrait,” Monthly Mirror 9:1 (July 1800), 7. I have been unable to confirm these accounts. Her friendships with Henry Cecil (the Marquis of Exeter), Henry Noel (the Earl of Gainsborough), and Reynolds were also emphasized. 35 HathiTrust, “The Lady’s Monthly Museum. v. 5 (July–Dec. 1800),” https://babel. hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433104825256;view=1up;seq=12;size=150 36 Several accounts describe Linwood working upright at an easel. Perhaps Rivers’ image was influenced by the smaller objects and drapery in Hoppner’s c. 1800 portrait. 37 Lady’s Monthly Museum, 1809, 314–15. 38 Inventory, 24 and 27; Jennings, Gender, Religion, and Radicalism, 138. Other subscribers include Linwood’s fellow needle painter Mary Morris Knowles and sculptor and draughtsman John Flaxman. 39 This subject matter surely interested Linwood, who almost always visited British spots for her holidays. 40 Carey, Balnea, iii–iv. 41 Ibid. 42 M. Boulton to M. Linwood, January 15, 1803, MS3782/12, MBFP, BRO, “Sketch of Miss Linwood’s wants for the New Rooms in Piccadilly,” n.p. Some of Linwood’s financial security likely stemmed from a January 1788 bequest from her maternal grandfather John Turner, who left Mary and her siblings £60 apiece, or approximately £7358 ($9670.00) in today’s currency. Linwood took a portion of this inheritance and purchased twenty-five shares in the Rochdale Canal Company; I estimate that each share was worth one pound at purchase. The shares were likely used as security for a loan toward the Leicester Square Gallery lease. 43 M. Boulton to M. Linwood, January 15, 1803, and February 10, 1803 (Linwood to Boulton), MS3782/12, MBFP, BRO. Boulton had given Linwood similar advice the previous month.

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44 Canal Junction, “Canal Heritage, History and Culture,” accessed April 17, 2019. http://www.canaljunction.com/canal/heritage.htm. Linwood owned shares in the Rochdale Canal Company, which had branches that reached to London and Leicester. 45 Linwood’s eyesight, so important to her embroidery, worsened in her forties and she began to wear glasses. As she aged, she often wore a second pair of glasses. 46 Linwood’s last advertisement for the Hanover Square gallery appeared in the March 30, 1801, edition of the Morning Post and Gazetteer. 47 Linwood’s brothers were based in London and Birmingham. 48 These amounts are roughly equivalent to £57,421 ($66,200) and £3114 ($3590) respectively in today’s currency. Linwood made the loan final payment in September 1810, one year after the Leicester Square venue opened. 49 M. Linwood to M. Boulton, August 30, 1805, Misc. 23/2, MBFP, BRO. Linwood wrote to Boulton, describing Sarah’s situation as one “that requires all of the exertion of her relatives and all of the kindness of her friends.” This amount is roughly equivalent to £381,654 ($440,000) in today’s currency. 50 M. Linwood to M. Boulton, February 10, 1803, MS3782/12, MBFP, BRO. 51 Linwood to M. Boulton, March 2, 1803, MS3782/12, MBFP, BRO. 52 M. Boulton to M. Linwood, December 10, 1803, MS3782/12, MBFP, BRO. 53 The Caledonian Mercury, no. 12,870. The day after Linwood’s opening, she held a special promenade in her gallery at 8pm. These rooms, located at 28 Thistle Street, were later known as Bernard’s. French emigrés in England found Edinburgh particularly attractive during the outbreak of war with France. 54 The wax modeler held shows in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dublin, and other Irish cities between 1803 and 1808. For more on Tussaud’s traveling exhibitions, see Pilbeam, History of Waxworks, 65–96. 55 Dublin Evening Post, April 15, 1806, no. 6181, pg. 2, BL; Hibernian Journal; or, Chronicle of Liberty, July 30, 1806, no. 181, pg. 1, BL. This advertisement lists Linwood’s gallery directly below ads for the city’s Theatre Royal and above the ad for Tussaud’s venue, which cost one shilling less than Linwood’s exhibition. 56 Tussaud continued to rely on these helpers after settling permanently in London in 1835. 57 Linwood mentioned Burton in her April 13, 1805, letter to Earl Buchan (Fitzwilliam Museum). Burton’s death was reported in the November 9, 1807, Belfast Commercial Chronicle (n. 427, pg. 3). 58 The financial details of the commission do not survive. 59 H. Linwood to M. Boulton, November 15, 1803, MS3782/12, MBFP, BRO. 60 Mark, “1804 Pleading with Joseph Farington,” The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition: A Chronicle, 1769–2018, https://chronicle250.com/1804#catalogue/No. 703; A Catalogue, Chronological and Descriptive of Paintings, Drawings, & Engravings, by and after William Grimaldi, RA, Paris, 1873, Internet Archive, http://www.archive. org/stream/acataloguechron01grimgoog/acataloguechron01grimgoog_djvu.txt. The Linwood portraits were framed together with miniatures of a Mr. and Mrs. Wilson, as well as a Mr. Isaac Pocock. 61 For example, when John Fiott Lee viewed Linwood’s exhibition in Dublin during his travels, he was particularly pleased by the placement of the two Stubbs replicas, stating that “the scenery around them does Miss Linwood credit. It is well conceived and happily arranged.” See Byrne/Lee, A Scientific, Antiquarian, and Picturesque Tour, 293.

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62 M. Linwood to M. Boulton, May 13, 1804, MS3782/12, MBFP, BRO. 63 Ibid. 64 Although it’s not clear when Linwood’s friendship with the siblings began, it may have been forged as early as 1790, when he began to build Donington Hall in Northwest Leicestershire. 65 Rawdon-Hastings is often credited with killing the American general Joseph Warren (1741–75) at the Battle of Bunker Hill (1775); he is seen in far background of John Trumbell’s depiction of the event. Rawdon-Hastings was also briefly considered as a replacement for Pitt as Prime Minister in 1797. While that came to naught, he was named Director General of Scotland in September of 1803. He also acted as an intermediary between the Prince of Wales and the estranged Princess of Wales, as well as the prince and his father. 66 M. Linwood to M. Boulton, August 31, 1805, MS3782/12, MBFP, BRO; Linwood Scrapbook, Leicester Museum and Art Galleries. On this trip, they also traveled to sites relating to the Irish Rebellion of 1798 and Wales, where she bought prints of Chirk Aqueduct and the Vale of Llangollen. 67 April 29, 1804, letter by Erskine in private collection. The work that this letter refers to is unknown. 68 M. Linwood to D. Erskine, April 13, 1805, Percival J82, Fitzwilliam Museum. 69 According to Linwood’s ad in the April 13, 1805, Caledonian Mercury (Edinburgh, Scotland), Issue 13,042, the show was in its final week. 70 April 29, 1804, letter in private collection. 71 M. Linwood to D. Erskine, April 13, 1805, Percival J82, Fitzwilliam Museum. 72 Cork City Libraries/Leabharlanna Cathrach Chorcaí, Cork Past and Present, accessed June 23, 2019. http://www.corkpastandpresent.ie/history/ historyofcorkcity/1700–1900/. In Cork, a prosperous city well known for its textile production, Linwood’s collection was seen in the Assembly Rooms on George’s Street, about three blocks away from the city’s main theater. No newspaper accounts of her show there exist, although an exhibition guide to it was published in late 1807. The guide was published by J. Connor, whose business was located on Grand Parade, close to Linwood’s exhibition space. 73 In “Mary Linwood of Leicester’s Pious Address of Violent Times,” Craske, 12, argues that her traveling shows were in support of the 1801 Act of Union. 74 At least twice during Linwood’s time in Dublin, she held a promenade and ball in her gallery to raise money for the Lying in Hospital there. 75 According to Hannah Linwood’s will, Mary’s three brothers inherited £750 apiece while Mary (Hannah’s executor) received £250, and her recently widowed sister Sarah, only £100. Mary Linwood also inherited the remaining balance on her mother’s loan. In a June 8, 1805, letter to Boulton, Mary worried that that he would require its repayment immediately. In it, she wrote, “if you wish to call it in, my house [the Priory in Leicester] must be sold. I cannot yet (original emphasis) afford to buy it.” Boulton agreed to give her extra time to repay the debt. 76 In Edinburgh, Linwood increased her ticket price from one shilling to two shillings. Her admission stayed at two shillings until 1837, when it was decreased to one shilling. 77 More research remains to be done on this connection, but her fame in London likely encouraged students to enroll at the family’s school.

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Chapter 4   1 Arlene Leis and Kacie Willis’s recent volume provides a helpful contextualization of Linwood’s collecting practices. See Women and the Art and Science of Collecting in Eighteenth-Century Europe.   2 The extensive furnishings of Linwood’s home at the Priory in Leicester indicate that it remained her home base and that the Leicester Square dwellings were for shorter stays in London.   3 M. Boulton to M. Linwood, January 15, 1803, MS3782/12, MBFP, BRO, “Sketch of Miss Linwood’s Wants for the New Rooms in Piccadilly,” n.p.   4 Sheppard, The Survey of London Volume 34, 461. Sir George Savile and his son, also named Sir George Savile, M.P., occupied the house between 1729 and 1783. The Prince of Wales and the Duke of York were the guests of the younger George. The former lived there until his ascension, while the latter moved out in 1763. Their mother, the Dowager Princess, lived next door to the west at Leicester House.   5 Linwood eventually acquired several sumptuous textiles to decorate her Leicester home, where they signaled wealth to her students and visitors. Little more is known about the elusive Broom brothers.   6 Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 720. When Page received the commission, he had just completed the restoration of Harewood House in London and would go on to remodel Grimsthorpe Castle in Lincolnshire for Lord Gwydor, a noted embroiderer.   7 Farington, The Diary of Joseph Farington, in his entry for February 5, 1807, vol. 7: 2962 reports that he “saw large room building and finishing for Miss Linwood.”   8 The costs mounted to a staggering £13,290 (£975,000 or $1,270,000.00 in today’s currency) to be divided by the tenants. Calculations were based on the gallery’s completion date of 1809. See MeasuringWorth, “Computing ‘Real Value’ over Time with a Conversion between U.K. Pounds and U.S. Dollars, 1791 to Present,” accessed September 23, 2018. https://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/exchange/result_ exchange.php   9 See Page v. Broom. 7 E.R. 154 (High Court of Chancery, July 3 1840). 10 The National Record Office records list Linwood’s tax and rent amounts. 11 Leicester Museums & Galleries, sketch book of Leicester architect Henry Goddard. 12 Feltham, The Picture of London for 1810, 292–4. 13 Chambers and Chambers, Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal XII, 70–1. 14 For more on this practice, see Nova, “Hangings, Curtains, and Shutters,” and Braun, Der Christliche Altar in seiner geschichtlichen Entwicklung. 15 The boundaries of this were formed on the north by Oxford Street and Holburn, the south by the Strand, the east by Chancery Lane and on the west by Bond Street. 16 Wedd with Peltz and Ross, Artists’ London: Holbein to Hirst, 35–6. Hogarth lived in the neighborhood from 1736 to 1764. Between 1760 and 1792, Reynolds lived and worked at 47 Leicester Fields, within walking distance of Linwood’s future gallery. 17 See Altick, The Shows of London, 128–40; Ralph Hyde, Panoramania!; and Stafford and Terpak, Devices of Wonder. The Hunterian Museum was housed directly opposite Barker’s first location, which opened on February 26, 1781. In 1782, he moved to his second location, on the east side of Leicester Place, where he constructed a narrow passage that led to a circular viewing platform for a more intense series of sensations. 18 For more on Hunter, see Moore, The Knife Man.

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19 It is unknown how many of these places Linwood visited, but she certainly was aware of them. 20 Godwin visited the Milton Gallery, the Panorama, and Linwood’s Gallery all within a few days in June of 1799. William Godwin’s Diary, University of Oxford, accessed September 23, 2019. http://godwindiary.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/events/index-exhib.html. Southey viewed a menagerie, Linwood’s Gallery, and the Strand during a short stay in the city. See Packer and Pratt, “The Collected Letters of Robert Southey, Part Four: 1810–1815,” Romantic Circles, accessed September 23, 2019. https://romantic-circles. org/editions/southey_letters/Part_Four/HTML/letterEEd.26.2311.html. See also Nowrojee and Merwanjee, The Journal of a Residence. 21 See Feltham, Picture of London for 1810. These guidebooks, printed for Richard Phillips, also include separate sections on famous painters and preachers. Like Linwood, Phillips worked as a schoolteacher in Leicester, where he very likely met Linwood, who was included in most of the editions of his guidebook. He worked with Dr. John Aikin, who was Lucy Aikin’s father. 22 June 9, 1809, London Morning Post, n. 11970, pg. 1. 23 Even at the Royal Academy, David Solkin and Martin Myrone argue, many came to be entertained, seeking sublime visual experiences, like what Martin and Wilkie produced. See Solkin, “‘This Great Mart of Genius’,” 5, and Myrone, “The Sublime as Spectacle.” 24 For a discussion of various types of visual spectacle and Géricault, see Riding, “Staging The Raft of the Medusa” and Crary, “Gericault, the Panorama, and Sites of Reality,” 5–25. 25 Brian Allen, “Art Exhibitions as Leisure-Class Rituals” and Hemingway, Landscape Imagery and Urban Culture, 1–7. 26 Linwood Inventory, 27. 27 The first advertisement for the Leicester Square gallery does not appear to have been placed until May 18, 1809 (Morning Chronicle, Issue 12486). 28 Linwood’s first London apartment met many of the criteria that she had specified to Boulton in their correspondence of 1803. The May 27, 1809, Morning Post (Issue 11,959) listed a lease amount (including furnishings) of 500 guineas. According to the ad, parties interested in the property were to contact a Mr. Grace, a man whom I have not been able to trace. 29 Linwood, The Linwood Gallery of Pictures in Needle-Work and a Biographical Sketch of the Painters (hereafter Biographical Sketches). The sale price of the volume is unknown. The image on its title page was created by an unknown artist. Boulders, trees, and bushes are seen in the foreground, while a sun rises over two mountains in its background. 30 The entry on Jane Grey, for example, seems to have been taken verbatim from Banks, The Innocent Usurper. The section on Virgil was cut and pasted from John Lempirère’s Classical Dictionary of 1822. These volumes are not in Linwood’s library but were reprinted in periodicals where she would have seen them. 31 The entry on Linwood’s originals (textiles that were not copies of other artists’ paintings) is terse, simply stating that there are three (Fox Alarmed Stealing from A Shelter, Landscape—A Fishing Party, and Dog-from Nature) in the gallery. 32 For example, the entry on Raphael is in the middle of the volume. Some of the first artists whom Linwood replicated (Cozens, Opie, and Charles Catton the Elder) are included in the first half of the book, but this rule is not consistently followed. The

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entries are also not organized by nationality or genre. It also does not provide any additional information about Linwood’s installation practice. 33 Linwood, Biographical Sketches, 14–15. 34 Ibid., 25–6. Gainsborough is also favorably compared to Claude, Raphael, Teniers, and van Dyck. 35 Three replicas of Gainsborough’s work were in the installations, while the other three were in the main gallery alongside her replicas of Morland’s and Cozens’ work. 36 Reynolds, Discourses, 301. For more on the rivalry between Reynolds and Gainsborough, see Hayes, The Letters of Thomas Gainsborough, especially 39, 86, 112, 146, 150, 162, and 170. As Hayes indicates, during the early 1780s, Gainsborough made a concerted effort to outdo Reynolds, an effort which was not one-sided. The rivalry, described by Reynolds as “little jealousies,” waned in the final years of Gainsborough’s life. Martin Postle provided a succinct account of the artists’ relationship in his analysis of the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1782. That year, Reynolds purchased Gainsborough’s Girl with Pigs, one of the eleven works that the latter displayed at the exhibition. See Postle, “1782 Sir Joshua Buys a Gainsborough,” The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition: A Chronicle, 1769–2018, accessed August 14, 2021. http://chronicle250.com/1782. 37 Cozens’s popularity was relatively short-lived, ending with his premature death in 1786, one year before the Pantheon show. 38 For a discussion of prints by and after Morland, see Alexander, “The Evolution of the Print Market” and “George Morland and the Print Market.” 39 Barrell, The Dark Side of the Landscape, 20. 40 See Hemingway, Landscape Imagery and Urban Culture for an analysis of landscape imagery as an urban phenomenon. 41 “Royal Academy,” Morning Post, June 4, 1795. The anonymous reviewer focused on the need for reform in landscape painting, singling out the topographical paintings of Paul Sandby at the Royal Academy for praise. 42 Taylor, Leicester Square, 461. This textile was Westall’s Woman and Child Sheltering from Storm. 43 Kirby, Leaflets from My Life, 39; cited in Aucott, Women of Courage. 44 Crary, “Gericault, the Panorama, and Sites of Reality,” 12. 45 Bermingham, “Gainsborough’s Cottage Doors,” 40–1 and Sensation and Sensibility, 22–4; Altick, The Shows of London, 123–5. de Loutherbourg ran the Eidophusikon in this location only until 1782; his assistant opened it in various locations around London in 1786, 1793, and 1799. de Loutherbourg’s experimentation inspired Gainsborough to create his own special effects using a slide box and transparencies. 46 There is no record of Linwood visiting the Eidophusikon or Gainsborough’s studio, but she was very likely aware of his interest in their creative practices. 47 In Linwood’s catalogue from 1830, a Landscape after Gainsborough (no. 62) appeared for the first time. Perhaps this was the replica of the third painting that she borrowed from Sheridan. 48 Farington, The Diary of Joseph Farington, vol. 7: 2508 (February 1–2, 1805), vol. 8: 3162 (December 12, 1807). The loan likely kept the paintings safe, perhaps from the Prince of Wales, whom Sheridan was then entertaining. According to the diarist, “Heath had a hint to take the pictures away in abt. 2 months or they might be seized. Heath keeps them for Miss Linwood.” Farington did not identify any of the Gainsborough loans, but Sheridan owned A Boy with a Cat—Morning from 1807 to 1816 and sold Children at the Fire in 1813.

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49 Price, ed., The Letters of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. “Heath broker” appears several times in Sheridan’s account books; this was very likely James Heath, a broker whose business was first located in Fitzroy Square and later (with his partner Hawkins) at 12 Water Lane, Tower Street. He should not be confused with Royal Engraver James Heath (1757–1834), with whom Sheridan was friendly. 50 24D53, May 19, 1806 letter from M. Linwood to Heath, The Record Office for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland. In this letter, Linwood clearly expected some of this money back in preparation for expenses relating to the Leicester Square Gallery. She wrote, “I want my Money very much-I am even distress’d to make my payments £3000 this Month—of which I have yet only 1,000.” It is unclear whether he returned her money. 51 Bermingham, “Gainsborough’s Cottage Doors,” 52. 52 Linwood’s library at the Priory included Gilpin’s Observations, Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty, Made in the Year 1776, on Several Parts of Great Britain; Particularly the High-lands of Scotland (1789) and Three Essays: On Picturesque Beauty; on Picturesque Travel; and on Sketching. 53 Belsey, Thomas Gainsborough, 2: 952. Gainsborough occasionally changed the gender of the subjects in his fancy pictures to suit his taste. 54 For a list of Linwood’s signed works, see the Catalogue. It is most likely that she inscribed her replica of A Boy with a Cat—Morning after completing it, although it is possible that she went back and added the inscription following the May 23, 1810, fire at Exton Hall. 55 See Goggin, “The Extra-ordinary Powers of Red,” 32–3 and Sam Vettese Forster and Robert M. Christie, “The Significance of the Introduction of Synthetic Dyes.” The first synthetic dye, mauveine, was invented in 1856. 56 Literary Chronicle for the Year 1823; Containing a Review of All New Publications of Value and Interest, 445–6. 57 Belsey, Thomas Gainsborough, 2: 978–9; Whitman, Charles Turner, 745, accessed August 1, 2019. https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/ collection_object_details.aspx?assetId=275621001&objectId=3030340&partId=1. Linwood’s name was misspelled as Lenwood on the print and no owner of the painting was indicated because of the loan. Its publication date was July 22, 1809. My thanks to David Alexander for his advice on this anomaly. 58 Portfolio, no. 6, Inventory, 29. 59 William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale, 4.4.522–24. References are to act, scene, and line. 60 The Prince of Wales notably used this moniker in his letters to his lowly born mistress Maria Fitzherbert. 61 Anderson, The Works of the British Poets, accessed March 3, 2020. https://books. google.com/books?id=L7dRAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA1140&lpg=PA1140&dq=Cotton+Fai rest+flowers+in+all+excelling+which+in+eden%27s+garden+grew&source=bl&ots= KDrCu9Va9X&sig=ACfU3U1MbrxQb59X-_wXoJ63NmsiOA3HGA&hl=en&sa=X& ved=2ahUKEwiUzN661qToAhUOKqwKHd6NC7YQ6AEwBnoECAcQAQ#v=onep age&q=Cotton%20Fairest%20flowers%20in%20all%20excelling%20which%20in%20 eden’s%20garden%20grew&f=false. Linwood’s inventory lists several anthologies of British poetry that included Shakespeare and Cotton (1630–87). 62 Barrell, The Dark Side of the Landscape, 16. 63 Price, On the Picturesque, 9. 64 Hedquist, “How a Lost Painting Endured,” 256–7.

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65 GAI/16, Royal Academy of Art, c. 1788 from Gainsborough to Reynolds. 66 Michael Rosenthal, “The Rough and the Smooth,” 48; Rosenthal and Myrone, Gainsborough, 215–19. According to Rosenthal, the Woodman featured a return to and enlargement of one of the key figures in his Wooden Landscape with Old Peasants and Donkeys Outside a Barn (1757–59). 67 For more on Barker’s adaptations of this image, see Payne, Toil and Plenty, 80. 68 Hedquist, “How a Lost Painting Endured,” 259. While Linwood owned several volumes of Cowper’s poetry, she appears to have copied the verses from the catalogue for Macklin’s Poets’ Gallery. The purchase price for Barker’s Woodman equates to approximately $85,700.00 in today’s money. See MeasuringWorth, “Computing ‘Real Value’ over Time with a Conversion between U.K. Pounds and U.S. Dollars, 1791 to Present,” accessed September 23, 2018. https://www.measuringworth.com/ calculators/exchange/result_exchange.php. 69 Linwood Inventory, 27. Linwood also owned several volumes of Cowper’s poetry. 70 Linwood excerpted lines 41–57 from Book V of The Task. 71 The Barker replica debuted at Linwood’s 1798 Hanover Square exhibition. The dimensions of the original painting are 93 inches (236 cm) by 58.5 inches (148.6 cm). Barker’s Woodman also inspired smaller scale embroidered replicas made c. 1800 by sisters Jane and Emily Cooper of Hampshire, England. See Freshford’s Fine Antiques, https://www.freshfords.com/antique-furniture/rare-pair-of-early-19th-centuryembroidery-needlework-pictures-of-the-woodman-and-the-furze-cutter/ 72 Belsey, Thomas Gainsborough, 2: 976; Jourdain, The History of English Secular Embroidery, 174. Secondary sources differ on the length of the loan, although Linwood seems to have had the paintings for at least one year. 73 Whitley, Thomas Gainsborough, 273. Henry Noel bought Gainsborough’s Shepherd Boy in 1781 and the Woodman in 1789, while his nephew and heir Gerald Noel purchased Cottage Children from the painter in 1787. 74 Linwood exhibition guide for 1800, not numbered, pg. 4; 1801, 16, pg. 13. 75 Classified advertisements in the Morning Chronicle (London, May 12, 1800; Issue 9663) and the Oracle and Daily Advertiser (London, May 12, 1800; Issue 22 284). 76 The Monthly Magazine or British Register, vol. 9, part 1 (January to July 1800): 482–3. 77 Linwood Inventory, 31. 78 William Gilpin, Three Essays, Essay 1, 8, 28, accessed February 14, 2020. http://quod. lib.umich.edu/004863369.0001.000. 79 Linwood Inventory, 25. Milton, a national poetic treasure and another one of Linwood’s favorite authors, profoundly influenced the format of Thomson’s lengthy poem. 80 Holberton, “James Thomson’s The Seasons.” 81 Calé, “Maria Cosway’s Hours,” 73. These include Gainsborough’s Lavinia the Milk Maid and Reynolds’ Cottagers. For a discussion of the relationship between Thomson’s poetry and Gainsborough, see Barrell, The Dark Side of the Landscape, especially 37–41. 82 Mary Linwood, 1809 Exhibition Catalogue, copy in author’s possession. Thomson, l. 1144–60. 83 For a discussion of the “Englishness” of Westall’s painting, see Kriz, The Idea of the English Landscape Painter, 47–51. No poetry was listed with this replica in Linwood’s catalogues. 84 Watts’s father, physician John Watts (d. 1800), was one of the founders of the Leicester Infirmary, an institution to which Linwood contributed throughout her life.

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His early death left Susannah to rely on her poetry and translation efforts to support the remaining members of her family, a similarity that she shared with Linwood. 85 Linwood Inventory, 27. 86 See the electronic version of the Robert Southey letters, “The Collected Letters of Robert Southey, Part Four: 1810–1815,” edited by Ian Packer and Lynda Pratt, Romantic Circles, accessed September 23, 2019. https://romantic-circles.org/ editions/southey_letters/Part_Four/ The younger Mary was the oldest child of John Linwood (c. 1760–1840), who married Susannah Cathrell on April 18, 1781, at Alvechurch, Worcestershire. Their daughter Mary was born in Birmingham in 1783. It seems very likely that the younger Mary studied with her aunt at the Priory, for many smaller boarding schools were attended by the owner’s extended family. The elder Mary also wrote Poet Laureate Robert Southey on behalf of her niece. The embroiderer asked Southey, who had visited her gallery in November of 1813, to preview the latter’s lengthy poem (the Anglo Cambrian, published in 1818) before it was printed by her aunt’s friend and author Richard Phillips. In addition to the Anglo Cambrian, Leicestershire Tale, and The House of Camelot; A Tale of the Olden Time, she composed an oratorio David’s First Victory. It was performed in 1840 at the Queen’s Concert Rooms, Hanover Square, and was conducted by Sir George Smart. She also wrote at least two operas, The Kellerin and The White Wreath, which were never published. 87 Linwood’s entry for the Gleaner was one of the longest ones in her catalogue, which suggests that the poem held a special place in the embroiderer’s heart. 88 Watts, An Autumnal Scene, lines 6, 29. 89 Ibid., line 84. 90 Ibid., line 125. 91 Biographical Sketches, 9–11, l. 29–32. 92 Linwood also owned a volume of poetry (mostly religious in theme) written by Jane Cave (c. 1754–1812) (Linwood Inventory, 26). 93 On March 21, 1799, the Oracle and Daily Advertiser reported on Linwood’s additional Gainsborough replicas: “We are happy to find the Miss LINWOOD has increased her collections (sic) of Pictures this season, one of which is from a muchadmired Picture of Gainsborough, of the Children and the Ass, in the celebrated Collection of the late Lord GAINSBOROUGH [Henry Noel].” 94 Richard Earlom also produced work under the name of Henry Birche. The model for Gainsborough’s painting was once again Jack Hill. The artist had intended to pair the painting with A Peasant Girl Gathering Sticks in a Wood (1782). 95 Linwood Inventory, 27. Linwood owned a copy of the Iliad. 96 Homer: The Iliad, book 4, lines 273–8, accessed September 18, 2014. http://www. poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Greek/Iliad4.htm. 97 Linwood likely relied on one of her many poetry compilations for the lines from Coleridge. 98 The Lake Circle poet’s scholarship on Shakespeare was likely also part of his appeal to Linwood. 99 Linwood cultivated relationships with several other Lake Poets with whom she shared a love of British landscape. For example, Coleridge’s friends William Wordsworth (1770–1850) and Poet Laureate Robert Southey (1774–1843) visited the Leicester Square Gallery in its early years. In July of 1812, the pair also traveled to Rokeby Hall, where they compared Anne Morritt’s embroidery to Linwood’s textiles. In Southey’s October 8, 1813, letter to Mary Barker (“Senhora”) (c. 1780–1853), he mentioned the

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upcoming visit to Linwood’s gallery, which occurred on November 9 of that year. The embroiderer was discussed in a February 13, 1812, letter between Southey and Barker and a September 16, 1813, letter from Southey to his wife Edith. Barker, a teacher, painter, and author, may have been a student at the Priory in the early nineteenth century. Between 1812 and 1817, she lived at Greta Lodge in Keswick, next to Greta Hall, becoming a close friend of the Southeys, Coleridges and Wordsworths, whose daughters she taught. For Southey’s correspondence, see Percival J81, Fitzwilliam Museum, Linwood to Southey, March 23, 1816; and the electronic version of the Robert Southey letters, “The Collected Letters of Robert Southey, Part Four: 1810–1815.” In 1815, Linwood wrote Southey on behalf of her niece Mary Linwood’s, a burgeoning poet. 100 Biographical Sketches, 56. 101 Linwood Scrapbook, Leicester Museums and Galleries, n.p. The print contains only the label “After Gainsborough,” which makes its creator hard to identify. It appears to be derived from Henry Birche’s mezzotint: see Belsey, Thomas Gainsborough, 1: 966–7 (1058). 102 For more on Ladies Albums and their contribution to the commercialization of amateur art, see Bermingham, Learning to Draw, particularly 127–74. 103 Smith, “Consuming Passions,” 67, cited in Dallow, “Treasures of the Mind,” 21. 104 Linwood’s two scrapbooks are listed on page 27 of her Inventory. For a discussion of scrapbooks as a democratic archival form, particularly for marginalized populations, see Garvey, Writing with Scissors. 105 Watts’s scrapbook in the Leicester Record Office contains a copy of Aikin’s poem in honor of Linwood and her obituary. 106 Prints by Westall are listed on Linwood Inventory, 28, and the engravings after Morland are listed (but not identified by name) on the following page. 107 Some connoisseurs often compared the two painters. Walpole, for example, thought that Morland’s Happy Cottagers was “as good as Gainsborough but has more harmony and better finish.” See Graves, The Society of Artists of Great Britain. 108 Only Linwood’s replica of The Farmer’s Stable was completed during Morland’s lifetime. It was very likely based on a large print of the painting. The replica debuted at Linwood’s Edinburgh exhibition of 1804–5. 109 Biographical Sketches, 20. 110 Cunningham, Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, 4: 234. Morland’s painting measures 58 1/2 x 80 ¼ inches. When it was first exhibited at the Royal Academy of 1791, it was described as “the choice of the year …. Its simplicity and truth are irresistibly pleasing.” See Morning Chronicle, May 2, 1791, quoted in Winter, George Morland, 100. 111 David Alexander, 33–47, and Murgia, “From Private to National,” 110–11. In 1792, engraver Daniel Orme (1766–1832) opened his gallery in London and the following year, Morland’s good friend, engraver John Raphael Smith (1751–1812), set up a more successful venue. 112 The Dublin exhibition featured fifty-two embroideries and was held at the Rotunda, Cavendish Row. In the exhibition catalogue, the Morland replicas were described as “lately added,” signaling their commemorative function. They were exhibited in the main room of her gallery there, a placement that did not change when Linwood opened the Leicester Square Gallery. 113 Linwood did not include poetry in her catalogue entries for the Litter of Foxes and Pigs.

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114 See, for example, the opening lines of the poem: Thy forest, Windsor! and thy green retreats, At once the Monarch’s and the Muse’s seats, Invite my lays. 115 Windsor Forest, lines 91, 99–103. 116 Cyder (1708) by John Philips (1676–1709) is often credited as the first of this genre. 117 Gay, Rural Sports: A Georgic, Canto II: lines 11–14. 118 Ibid., Canto II: 39–44. 119 Gay, The Shepherd and the Philosopher, lines 41–44. 120 The Chace was published in several collections of British poetry, including compilations by Samuel Johnson and Robert Anderson, both of which Linwood owned. Somerville may have also come to her attention through her friendship with Lucy Aikin, whose father John was an expert on the poet. 121 Here Somerville was echoing Pope’s description of his country (l. 91) in Windsor Forest. 122 The Chace, lines 75–80. 123 Parker, The Subversive Stitch, 143–5. 124 Price, On the Picturesque, 9–10. 125 Panoramas, for example, were quite popular in the neighborhood. In 1814, an Astronomical Panorama opened below her gallery, while in 1815, Miller’s Mechanical and Beautiful Picturesque Representations debuted there. An exhibition in the 1820s highlighted Greek and Etruscan antiquities. After 1845, Linwood’s gallery housed several notable panoramas, including Moses Gompertz’s depiction of the Arctic Regions (1849); E. Cambon’s panorama of Paris, Versailles and St. Cloud (1851); and a diorama of Captain Hill’s Tour in Spain (1853) by an unknown designer.

Chapter 5   1 Chambers, The Book of Days: A Miscellany of Popular Antiquities, 348–9.   2 Gentleman’s Magazine, July 1813, vol. 83: 2: 60.   3 London Morning Post, April 20, 1835, Issue 20,083, pg. 3.   4 Ibid.   5 From 1769 to 1911, the Royal Academy’s hours of operation were 8am to 7pm, Monday to Saturday. Linwood’s gallery spaces opened at 9am and closed between 6 and 7pm. Her ticket prices of one shilling in the late eighteenth century and two shillings in the nineteenth century paralleled the Academy’s admission fees.   6 “Mary Linwood,” The Ladies Monthly Museum (July 1800): 4.   7 Linwood Inventory, 24.   8 Compare Linwood’s textile to a study for Reynolds’s painting: WikiArt, “Study for King Lear.”   9 Linwood also included verse in the entry for Opie’s Eloisa. 10 Northcote produced at least two copies of his teacher’s portrait that feature backgrounds like those seen in Linwood’s version. 11 Also see my discussion of Northcote in this volume’s catalogue. 12 Mannings, Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1: 503. Frances Reynolds made miniature copies these fancy pictures by her famous brother, Cupid as Link Boy, a Strawberry Girl, and Robinetta, as well as participating in the 1774 and 1775 Royal Academy exhibitions.

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13 Reynolds, Discourses, IIIL: 94–5. 14 For more on the educational function of Reynolds’s collecting, see Esposito, ed., The Acquisition of Genius. 15 Ibid. and Discourses, II: 94–5 and VIII: 223. 16 Postle, The Subject Pictures, 106; Bryant, Kenwood, Paintings in the Iveagh Bequest, 358. Jenny Sliwka’s recent exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery examines the longevity of this artistic motif embodied by Rembrandt’s painting. 17 Discourses, VI: 167. 18 Linwood Inventory, 29. 19 Mannings, Sir Joshua Reynolds, 2: 530–1; Postle, The Subject Pictures, 106. Reynolds often gave his fancy pictures mythological titles; well-known ones include Cupid as a Link Boy and Mercury as a Cut Purse. The paintings reflected his study and synthesis of paintings by Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Murillo, Guercino, and others. 20 See for example, Reynolds, “Girl Leaning on a Pedestal, or the Laughing Girl,” accessed February 1, 2022. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Girl_leaning_ on_a_pedestal,_or_The_Laughing_Girl.jpg. 21 Discourses, III: 92. 22 Postle, The Subject Pictures, 106; Mannings, Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1: 530–1. Reynolds created his first version of this subject in 1782 and artist George Engleheart made a copy of it in the painter’s studio. The second version was purchased by 2nd Viscount Palmerston. Although the date of purchase is unknown, the painting seems to have entered his collection in December of 1791. There is no indication that Linwood saw either version of the original painting; her textile copies are close in size to polygraphed versions of Reynolds’s paintings, which were available as early as 1784. 23 Mannings, Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1: 532, n. 2074. The Laughing Girl was also listed in the Society’s sales catalogue of 1795 held after the death of proprietor Thomas Goddard. 24 Matthew Hunter, “Did Sir Joshua Reynolds Paint His Pictures?.” Since most of Reynolds’s fancy pictures were produced on speculation, they were well-suited for his experimentation with new motifs and technology. See also Northcote, The Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds, 2: 21. 25 Hunter, “Mr. Hooke’s Reflecting Box: Modeling the Camera Obscura in the Early Royal Society of London,” Huntington Library Quarterly, Special Issue: “Curiously Drawn,” 323–7. The camera obscura is in the collection of the London National Science Museum. 26 Ibid. I am very grateful to Mr. Hunter for bringing my attention to this letter, which he has transcribed and published in his article. See also N. Clothier to Richard Redgrave, Art Department, South Kensington Museum, March 30, 1875; Science Museum T 1875/28; June 26, 2017 correspondence with Peter Humfrey. The letter also reported that another gifted embroiderer, Lady Yates, born Elizabeth Baldwyn (?-1808) had taught Linwood embroidery, an unverifiable claim. Baldwyn was married to distinguished judge Sir Joseph Yates (1722–70), who was knighted in 1763. I have found no communication between Reynolds and either Sir Joseph or Lady Elizabeth. 27 Linwood Inventory, 30. 28 Discourses, IV: 123. For example, he praised Raphael and Maratti for their adherence to disegno (line and tight brushstroke), as opposed to lush and vibrant colore. 29 Morning Chronicle, April 23, 1838, issue 21354.

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30 See Esposito, ed., The Acquisition of Genius, 135 and Discourse V: 137, in which Reynolds described Reni’s art as one in which his figures “are often engaged in subjects that required great expression.” 31 Cited in Francesca Baldassari, Carlo Dolci: Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, 11–16. 32 Linwood’s replica resembles a half-length figure of David holding Goliath’s head, now in the Museo Bardini, Florence. 33 Burghley House, “Our Saviour Blessing the Bread and Wine, by Carlo Dolci (1616–1687).” During his third Grand Tour of Italy in 1683–4, John Cecil (1648–1700, the 5th Earl of Exeter) traveled to Florence where he acquired the Salvator Mundi, along with seven other paintings that he believed were by the artist’s hand. In addition to Linwood, John Constable apparently also copied Dolci’s painting in 1810. See Reynolds, The Early Paintings and Drawings of John Constable, 1: 146. 34 Craske, “Mary Linwood’s Pious Address,” 18–20. It was exhibited with a letter describing Christ’s appearance, purportedly written by a Roman official Publius Lentulus, who supposedly saw Christ during his trial before Pontius Pilate. The veracity of the Lentulus letter was widely believed during the eighteenth century, although it was later proved a forgery. Dolci’s painting was in line with the earlier descriptions of Christ’s appearance, making it seem as if the painting was a veristic portrait. 35 Ingram, “Miss Mary Linwood,” 146. 36 Henry Noel to Elizabeth Noel, September 18, 1792, DE3214/10493, Records of the Noel family, The Record Office for Leicester, Leicestershire, and Rutland. 37 “Lucky Miss Linwood,” Two Teens in the Time of Austen (blog), January 1, 2011. https://smithandgosling.wordpress.com/2011/01/01/lucky-miss-linwood/. 38 See Christie’s, “Salvator Mundi.” Leonardo’s painting had been in a private collection in England since 1638 and was well-known through prints. Smeeton’s version is listed in Linwood’s inventory. See Earlom, Salvator Mundi. 39 Craske, “Mary Linwood’s Pious Address,” 11–14. Linwood’s rather orthodox religious beliefs were also reflected by the contents of her library, which included multiple volumes on Protestant theology, including two copies of Martin Luther’s On the Bondage of the Will and several conduct manuals written by Anglican clergymen. 40 Ibid., 11. 41 The Leicester Mercury, September 22, 1838. In 1838, Linwood also played a leading role in raising money for the construction of a new church, Christ Church, Leicester (now destroyed), for St. Margaret’s Church could no longer accommodate its attendees. 42 Craske, “Mary Linwood’s Pious Address,” 16–17. Lowth’s words were changed slightly by the Rev. John Piggott, who also wrote the poetry included in the entry for the replica of Dolci’s David. 43 Discourses, III: 103–4. 44 Ibid., VI: 164. 45 Ibid., VIII: 222. For more information on this painting and its discussion in Reynolds’ Eighth Discourse, see Braham and Bruce-Gardner, “Ruben’s ‘Landscape by Moonlight’,” and Art and Architecture, “Landscape by Moonlight,” Courtauld Institute of Art. http://www.artandarchitecture.org.uk/images/gallery/209b9cab.html. No prints or engravings after Rubens are listed in Linwood’s portfolios, but portfolio 7 contained a large collection of uncatalogued ones. She also replicated a second Rubens painting, A Sea View.

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46 On the many copies of this popular painting by Raphael, see National Trust Collections, “Madonna della sedia (after Raphael).” 47 Byrne/Lee, A Scientific, Antiquarian, and Picturesque Tour, 290. 48 Linwood Scrapbook, Leicester Museums and Galleries. 49 See for example, Miss Linwood’s Gallery of Pictures, 1819, 24. 50 Discourse V: 145. 51 Ibid., II: 96–7. 52 Biographical Sketches, 18. 53 In the late eighteenth century, most of Carracci’s paintings were still in his hometown of Bologna. 54 The identification is further complicated by the fact that Carracci’s style is sometimes characterized by inconsistency, as Christiansen indicates in “A Late Masterpiece by Ludovico Carracci,” 22–3. 55 Esposito, ed., The Acquisition of Genius, 129–30. 56 Discourses, II: 96–7, V: 139. 57 By the time that Linwood created the Carracci and Maratti replicas, she was over fifty years old and wore glasses. 58 Discourses, V: 145. 59 In the early nineteenth century, many examples of Opus Anglicanum remained in private collections. I have not found any references to it in Linwood’s extant correspondence. For a definitive account of the genre, see Brown, Davies, and Michael, eds., English Medieval Embroidery. 60 Interview with Lynn Hulse via zoom, December 13, 2022. 61 La Belle Assemblée, “Miss Linwood,” 196. Linwood was likely behind this publication, which repeats much of the information in the Lady’s Monthly Museum article of July 1800.

Chapter 6   1 O’Neill, “United Kingdom: Life Expectancy 1765–2020.”   2 Leicester Museums & Galleries, Linwood scrapbook, n.p.   3 Graham Jones, St. Margaret, Leicester, 13; The Leicester Mercury, September 22, 1838; Lambert, “A History of Leicester.” At the time of its first census in 1800, there were 17,000 occupants, which had more than doubled by 1831, when the city’s residents numbered almost 40,000. A total of 24,000 of these lived in Linwood’s parish of St. Margaret’s.   4 The Leicester Journal, February 28, 1817, September 5, 1834. A Society for the Relief of the Irish Poor and the Leicester Infant School Society also received Linwood’s support. She worked with the Duke of Rutland, Lady Adeliza Manners, and Lady Elizabeth Norman on these causes. In 1828, Linwood changed the Priory’s description in the Leicestershire Directories.   5 For examples of these endeavors, see the September 11, 1812, September 14, 1812, September 14, 1832, October 4, 1833, April 20, 1838, April 26, 1839, September 24, 1841, and August 13, 1841, issues of the Leicester Journal. Advance tickets for Linwood’s exhibitions were purchased from a bookseller, Thomas Combe, the proprietor of the first private lending library in the city. Linwood frequently used the Corn Exchange in the city center as the venue for the events. Members of the Leicestershire Yeomanry, an early recipient of Linwood’s largesse, served as honor

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guards at the temporary exhibitions. Admission was discounted for workers, servants, and children, another example of Linwood’s entwined educational, artistic, and charitable intentions.   6 Linwood often held her local exhibitions in the early autumn to coincide with the city’s Race and Cavalry Weeks, whose visitors might be especially interested in her depictions of sporting and rural life.   7 The Leicester Mercury, September 22, 1838. Christ Church was built to house some of the overflow from Linwood’s home church of St. Margaret’s.   8 Frizelle, The Life and Times of the Royal Infirmary at Leicester, 66; Frizelle and Martin, The Leicester Royal Infirmary 1771–1971, 76. In the 1830s, Leicester was in the midst of a population increase and an economic slump. The exhibition ultimately raised £114.   9 The Leicester Journal, September 17, 1841, 3, and The Leicester Journal, October 22, 1841, 2, which lamented the “very depressed state of Trade in this Town and neighbourhood at this present period.” For a summary of contributions to the Leicester Infirmary, see the September 8, 1871 issue of the Leicester Journal. 10 The Leicester Chronicle: or, Commercial and Agricultural Advertiser, September 11, 1841, issue 1607; The Leicester Chronicle, October 2, 1841, issue 1610. 11 See The Leicester Journal, November 20, 1812, for an example of one such donation. 12 Kirby, Leaflets, 38–9. The children’s dances there were opened by the Priory’s dancing teacher Mr. Bland. 13 Linwood’s own drawings numbered well over 250. She also acquired at least 500 prints and engravings after other artists. 14 Delamaire and Irving, “Was Fanny Palmer the Powerhouse,” 4–5; Rubinstein, “The Early Career,” 71–3. Bond Palmer’s topographical images brought her to the attention of Currier, who hired her to work as draftsman and engraver for his firm. She worked there between 1849 and 1868, while her husband sought employment elsewhere. 15 Leicester Journal, July 1, 1842, cited in Rubenstein, “The Early Career,” 75. Fanny drew and designed the lithographs, while her husband printed them. 16 See Palmer’s illustrations in The American Flora, or History of Plants and Wildflowers. 17 I am grateful to Linda Eaton for this reference. Brown likely attended the Priory in the early nineteenth century, prior to her c. 1808 marriage and emigration to the United States. For her advertisement, see The Baltimore North American and Mercantile Daily Advertiser, vol. II, no. 277, November 28, 1808, and Allen, A Maryland Sampling, 15–16. In the advertisement, Brown “respectfully solicits the patronage of the public to a school for the instruction of YOUNG LADIES in the following branches, viz. Embroidery, Tambour, Cotton Work, Rugs, Mats, Chimney and other Fancy Ornaments, Netting, Marking and Plain Sewing: Music, French, Drawing, Arithmetic, Writing, Geography, History, English Grammar, Orthography, and Reading.” She and her husband were to teach there and “the price will be moderate, and the number limited.” 18 Delamaire and Irving, “Was Fanny Palmer the Powerhouse,” 29–30. 19 Roget, A History of the “Old Water-colour” Society, 2: 48. Flower came from a woolcombing family and knew Linwood through the textile trade. 20 De Wint and Hilton, A Short Memoir. De Wint’s wife was Newark native Harriet Hilton (1791–1866). She was the daughter of a portrait painter who recalled reading to Linwood while she embroidered. Her exact years at the Priory are not known but ended by 1810, the date of her marriage. Her older brother William (1786–1839) was a successful history painter who eventually became Keeper of the Royal Academy.

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William had at least one other connection to the Linwood circle, for he traveled to France and Italy with Thomas Phillips in 1825. See Pointon, “The Italian Tour.” 21 Hilton married de Wint in 1810, and the couple shortly thereafter moved to London. 22 National Art Library, MSL/1979/7461, May 2, 1816. 23 Bennett, John Flower 1793–1861, 76. In 1851, Flower moved to his final home in Leicester that he designed along with architect Henry Goddard, who sketched the interior of Linwood’s Leicester Square Gallery. 24 See Linwood Inventory, 28, portfolio 1, no. 1 for watercolors by de Wint (spelled P. Dervint) and pg. 29, portfolio 7, no. 16 for lithographs by Flower. At some point, de Wint traveled to Enderby Hall, where Linwood had been the guest of Charles Loraine Smith in the 1790s. His depictions of it capture the picturesque features of the countryside surrounding the family’s grand home. See for example, Leicestershire, “At Enderby Hall.” 25 Wykes, “Journal of John Kirby of Leicester,” 44, 53–5. The school came to the Kirbys’ attention through a mutual friend, Elizabeth Coltman Heyrick (1761–1838), a local schoolteacher and abolitionist. Linwood may have shared their interest in the abolitionist movement. The Kirbys and the Coltmans were involved in the manufacture of hosiery and worsted wool, which Linwood used for her textiles. See Skillington, “The Coltmans of the Newarke at Leicester,” 14–15. 26 Creese, Ladies in the Laboratory, 33. After being contacted by London publisher Thomas Jarrold, Mary recalled that “it was very easy to do, for I had the botanical knowledge at my finger ends; and Elizabeth had such fluency in writing that the sentences seemed to flow from her pen as readily as pearls and diamonds from the mouth of the fairy in the fairy tale.” 27 Ibid. 28 Kirby, Leaflets, 38–9. 29 See the advertisements, for example, in the Morning Chronicle, March 28, 1831, and Morning Chronicle, November 27, 1837, issue 21,228, among others. It is unclear whether Linwood also dismantled their installations at this time. 30 Both new replicas seem to have been based on images that she owned. The Guérin replica (the largest image in Figure I.2) was hung directly under her embroidered Self-Portrait, where it was surrounded by the Farmer’s Stable after Morland, Laughing Girl after Reynolds, Linwood’s Self-Portrait after Russell, Sleeping Girl after Reynolds, and Litter of Foxes after Loraine Smith. The Gainsborough textile was nestled between the Tygress and one of her own original compositions, A Spaniel from Nature. 31 For example, see The Morning Chronicle, April 4, 1831, and Chamber’s Edinburgh Journal, vol. XI, London, 1843, 70. 32 Leicester Journal, April 22, 1831, 3. 33 Morning Chronicle, January 16, 1843, issue 22,825. 34 Webster visited the gallery in 1839 with his friend Harriette Story Paige (1809–63) of Salem, Massachusetts. For an account of their July 12, 1839, visit to the Leicester Square Gallery, see Gray and Paige, Daniel Webster in England, 109. 35 Not much is known about Green’s venue. The basement was rented out to an unknown individual named Griffin. 36 Altick, The Shows of London, 229–30. 37 Ibid., 401; Thackeray, “John Leech’s Pictures of Life and Character (1854).” Thackeray visited the Linwood Gallery in 1820.

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38 See Dickens, The Personal History of David Copperfield, 443, and A Plated Article, 462. Dickens apparently visited the gallery as an adolescent. Since Dickens often focused on Victorian social problems, it should not be a surprise that female embroiderers feature in his stories, including Christmas Shadows (1850) and Little Dorrit (1857). For a discussion of this trope, see Harris, Famine and Fashion. 39 In The Art of Needlework (which Linwood owned), 395–6, the Countess of Wilton (Mary Margaret Stanley Egerton) wrote that Miss Linwood has achieved the triumph of modern art in needlework; her exhibition used to be one of the lions of London, and fully deserves to be now. In The Ladies’ Work-table Book, G. B. Zeibner, 27, concluded his chapter on needlework materials with a short ode to Linwood who “bid mimic art with nature’s self to vie.” 40 Fearful that he would not receive payment from Willows, Page entered into a legal agreement with the three co-lessees to ensure that he would earn some compensation for his work. It is not clear whether Linwood met her financial obligations to Page, but Willows and the Broom brothers defaulted on them. See Page v. Linwood and Page v. Broom (Court of Chancery, 7 E.R. 154, July 17, 1837). 41 Linwood’s will is dated March 20, 1839; a codicil was added on December 16, 1843. 42 London Morning Post, March 11, 1845, pg. 6, issue 23,137. 43 The Leicestershire Mercury, March 15, 1845, pg. 3, issue 454. 44 For an account of Linwood’s funeral, see the London Morning Post, March 17, 1845, pg. 5, issue 23,142. 45 This plaque was placed above an earlier one that Mary installed. It is dedicated “to the memory of Matthew and Mary Linwood” by their daughter Mary, who died in the nineteenth century. The marker to Mary and her parents is located next to one dedicated to her favorite sister Sarah (d. 1822), and her husband Samuel Markland (d. 1805), a hosier who assisted his sister-in-law with financial transactions in Leicester. For example, see LRO 109/30/62 (August 8, 1804), a surety bond that Samuel Markland and Mary Linwood co-signed with Leicester bankers Mansfield and Miller. 46 The poem (by an unknown author) was originally published in the Nottingham Mercury. It was reprinted in the April 4, 1845, Leicester Journal, no. 5004: 3. 47 Linwood Inventory, 12, 23. I have not been able to verify the provenance of Linwood’s bed. While the Priory and Linwood’s childhood home were in two different locations, Linwood eventually made the Priory her home. 48 The objects in Linwood’s kitchens and other service rooms were auctioned on the sale’s first day, while the bedrooms were the focus of the second day. The third day was devoted to Linwood’s substantial collection of china, glass, and plate, yet another indicator of her wealth. The origins of the medals are unknown. 49 The June 14, 1845, Warwick and Warwickshire Advertiser reported that the auction garnered £10,000. 50 Linwood’s inventory contains eighteen paintings by her own hand. 51 The inventory also contains many drawings of shells, fruit, and flowers, subject matter that would have been popular with Linwood’s students. 52 Morning Chronicle, London, November 6, 1845, issue 23,722. Various secondary sources report that Linwood offered her textile collection to the British Museum and House of Lords, both of whom rejected her offer. I have been unable to confirm this information.

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53 The auction included fifty-seven textiles and three paintings (the oil on canvas prototypes for the Judgment upon Cain, a Gainsborough Landscape, and Northcote’s Hubert and Arthur). The most expensive reserve prices were for the Guérin replica (£80), Morland’s A Farmer’s Stable (£50), and Hubert and Arthur (£50). The replica of Gainsborough’s Woodman sold for £35. 54 Linwood’s name, however, still held some cultural currency, for the woman who rented the London venue after her, Madame Wharton (Eliza Crowe), advertised it as the home of the former Linwood Gallery. Like its predecessor, Wharton’s business blended the Old Masters with contemporary showmanship through the production of tableaux vivant, some of which were inspired by the paintings of Titian and Botticelli, in which she was the star. The building later became the site of the Denmark Theatre and other pastimes before it was destroyed in an 1865 fire. 55 Emma was the nickname for one of Linwood’s several eponymous nieces. She was the eldest child of Samuel Whalley Linwood, the third child of Matthew Linwood and Hannah Turner Linwood. In the 1790s, Samuel and younger brother William moved to Jamaica to make their fortunes. There Samuel (d. 1801) married Priscilla Reid, who was described as a “mulatto” in historical documents. Emma/Mary was the second of their four children. She married George Bellairs (1787–1875) in 1824. 56 Linwood’s will was proved on June 2, 1845. 57 Mary Linwood Comprehensive School was located about four miles south of Belgave Gate on Trenant Road. There also appears to have been a Linwood Boys School, which merged with the Girls School in 1976. 58 Will of Mary Linwood, PROB 11/2019/315, UK National Archives. 59 For an account of Queen Charlotte’s (Victoria’s grandmother) patronage of Linwood, see my essay “Stitching the Stage” in Materializing Gender. 60 Josué Heilmann (1796–1848) invented the hand embroidery machine, a device that uses multiple needles at once to produce hundreds of identical images. The invention of the sewing machine is usually attributed to Americans Elias Howe and Isaac Singer in 1844 and 1850, respectively. Europeans Charles Weisenthal, Thomas Saint, Thomas Stone, James Henderson, John Duncan, and Barthelemy Thimomnier also contributed to the machine’s genesis. 61 National Museums of Scotland, “Colouring the Nation.” Although the first synthetic dye, picric acid, which produced a bright yellow on silk, was invented in 1771, William Henry Perkin was responsible for the popularization of synthetic dyes. In 1856, Perkin accidentally invented a mauve dye in his quest to synthesize the antimalarial drug quinine. 62 For an introduction to Berlin wool work, see Textile Research Centre, “Introduction to Berlin Work.” 63 Sharp hues like pink, forest green, and yellow were often seen in the Berlin woolwork kits, unlike the more muted color palette used by Linwood. 64 See for example, Vickery, Behind Closed Doors, 234–6, 251 and Bermingham, Learning to Draw, 130. 65 Home Subjects, “Queen Victoria’s Carpet, Part II.” Papworth painted the design and cut it into 150 squares that measured two feet by two feet. The location of the thirty by twenty-foot carpet is unknown. 66 Selous, The Opening of the Great Exhibition, 1851. 67 In Thackeray’s account of his visit to Linwood’s gallery, he describes the Salvator Mundi as a Last Supper worked in Berlin Wool, which is wrong on two counts. Also see Lowes, Chats on Old Lace, 350–4, who wrote, “not only Miss Linwood, but Mrs.

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Delany and Miss Knowles made themselves famous for Berlin-wool pictures.” Lowes, who was a fan of Opus Anglicanum, described Linwood in very unflattering terms, writing, “Would that she had never been born!” and wishing for her end in a vat of boiling oil. Her account also includes an erroneous conflation of Linwood’s gallery and Reynolds’s studio space. 68 Cluckie, The Rise and Fall of Art Needlework, 47, and Turner, “Of Modern Embroidery,” 362. Turner wrote that there is “nothing more against it [embroidery] as machinery, which floods the market with its cheap imitations.” 69 Claire Hunter, Threads of Life, 223–6. This terminology was also employed by the men who exhibited their quilts at the Great Exhibition of 1851. 70 See for example, Hitchcock, “Introduction,” 12. 71 Morris, “Of Embroidery.” Fellow embroiderer Mary Elizabeth Turner also warned against naturalism in needlework in “Of Modern Embroidery,” 214–15, 355–6. 72 Morton, ed., The Political Writings of William Morris, 109–33. “Art and Socialism” was first delivered as a lecture to the Leicester Secular Society on January 23, 1884. Later that year, Wardle published it as a pamphlet in Leek. 73 Cluckie, The Rise and Fall of Art Needlework, 80. 74 For a nuanced examination of May Morris and her formative role in the Arts and Crafts movement, see the fine work of Hulse, ed., in May Morris: Art & Life and the compilation published in conjunction with the May Morris: Art & Life exhibition, Mason et al., May Morris: Arts & Crafts Designer. 75 Swain, Historical Needlework, 109, and Turner, “Of Modern Embroidery,” 362. In its early years, Morris & Co. was a communal environment that encouraged the work of women and men. In addition to May Morris and Mary Turner, Morris promoted the career of Catherine Holiday, whom he described as one of the most talented embroiderers in Europe. 76 Browne, “Afterword,” 109. 77 Cluckie, The Rise and Fall of Art Needlework, 80. 78 Chomet, Helena, Princess Reclaimed, 124–5. When the school was founded, it was known as the School of Art Needlework, and Royal was added to the name in 1876. 79 Brooke, Catalogue of Embroideries, The Lady Lever Art Gallery, 94 and Cluckie, The Rise and Fall of Art Needlework, 108. Frederick, Lord Leighton, was also one of the RSAN’s favorite designers. 80 Ortner, “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?” 81 Mansfield, “Art History and Modernism.” According to Mansfield two of art history’s most important objectives—the preservation of past objects and the organization of these items—seem to be at chronological odds with each other, for the latter goal is an inherently modernist idea that stems from Enlightenment beliefs. 82 The Leek Embroidery Society was founded by Thomas Wardle, who worked closely with Morris and the Royal School of Art Needlework. Like Linwood, they embraced embroidery as a patriotic endeavor, producing a replica of the Bayeux Tapestry so that England could have their own copy of the famous textile. Wardle eventually started his own needlework school; its designs were sold in London by Debenham and Freebody, later Debenham Department Store. Another department store, Liberty’s of London, specialized in embroidery and opened a needlework school as well. It was established in 1875 by Arthur Lasenby Liberty, who was friends with Morris and Wardle. 83 Draper, “Mary Beale and Art’s Lost Laborers,” 150–1. 84 Preziosi, “Unmaking Art History,” 117–18.

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Catalogue of Linwood’s Textiles   1 Barker’s Woodman also inspired smaller-scale embroidered replicas made c. 1800 by sisters Jane and Emily Cooper of Hampshire, England. See Freshford’s Fine Antiques, “The Woodman and the Furze Cutter.”   2 Biographical Sketches, 31.   3 Ibid., 16.   4 Strobel, The Artistic Matronage of Queen Charlotte (1744–1818), 239–40.   5 Linwood Inventory, 30.   6 Biographical Sketches, 31.   7 Ibid., 13.   8 Dolci, David with the Head of Goliath.   9 Biographical Sketches, 25. 10 Bryne/Lee, A Scientific, Antiquarian, and Picturesque Tour, 290. 11 Biographical Sketches, 25. 12 The Monthly Magazine or British Register, 482–3, as described by Hedquist, “How a Lost Painting Endured.” 13 Biographical Sketches, 36. 14 Diary or Woodfall’s Register, May 14, 1789, quoted in Coffey, “‘Tremble, Britannia!’,” 865. 15 Linwood Inventory, 30–1. Her replicas of the Hare and one of the avian paintings appear to have been excerpted from Haughton’s larger compositions. Linwood’s inventory also lists Wild Ducks and Birds by Hinton, which is likely a misspelling of Haughton’s name. 16 Biographical Sketches, 19. 17 Ibid., 18. 18 See Pilkerton, Memoirs of Celebrated Female Characters, 233; and “A Biographical Sketch of Miss Linwood”; Lady’s Monthly Museum V (July–December 1800): 1–2; and Jourdain, English Secular Embroidery, 174. 19 D’Oench, “Copper into Gold,” 76–8; Riley, The Accomplished Lady, 151; and Therle Hughes, English Domestic Needlework 1660–1860, 92. Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi and mourners at Shakespeare’s tomb were frequently produced in needlework. Other popular literary themes include Maria and Her Dog (from Sterne’s Sentimental Journey); Fame Strewing Flowers on Shakespeare’s Tomb, and The Deserted Village and The Cottage Door (both after prints by Francis Wheatley). 20 In this scene, Werther imagines the woman whom he loves, Charlotte (Lotte), visiting his grave. Her marriage to an older man has prevented her from returning Werther’s love, causing his suicide. She holds a book in her hand, representing their shared intellectual interests, and gazes toward his Neoclassical urn, which is mounted on a plinth. It is easy to see how this tale of unrequited love, mourning, and remembrance was popular among those who embraced the cult of sensibilité. Even though these images embody romantic love, the broader themes of loss, remembrance, and virtue may have resonated with Linwood, whose father died on February 28, 1783. 21 Girls would also be expected to master longer stitches, which are seen in the background here. Schoolgirls in the colonies utilized similar source material as their British counterparts. See Eaton, Lane, and Weisberg, Embroidery: The Language of Art, 16–19; Nylander, “Some Print Sources,” 294–6; and Cabot, “Engravings as Pattern Sources,” 476–9. 22 Johnson, Glimpses of Ancient Leicester, 2nd ed., 342.

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23 Biographical Sketches, 26–7. 24 Ibid., 32. 25 Bryne/Lee, A Scientific, Antiquarian, and Picturesque Tour, 292. 26 Alexander, “George Morland and the Print Market,” and Murgia, “From Private to National,” 110–11. In 1792, engraver Daniel Orme (1766–1832) opened his gallery in London and the following year, Morland’s good friend and engraver, John Raphael Smith (1751–1812), set up a more successful venue. 27 Biographical Sketches, 20. 28 Grozer, A Litter of Foxes. 29 Bryne/Lee, 290. Lee’s account remains the only itemized description of her collection. 30 Ibid., 291. Lee remarked that Lady Jane’s gown was “the only part which shews that work to be of worsteds.” British author Nicholas Rowe popularized the doomed heroine with his eponymous play of 1715. In The English Drama Purified, James Plumptre also commented on the realism of Linwood’s replica. 31 Some of the Priory students very likely saw Linwood at work on the replica in Leicester. 32 The guide included a paragraph about Lady Jane from Hays, Female Biography. The Biographical Sketches reproduced an excerpt from The Innocent Usurper, written by Katherine Banks in 1694. 33 Simon, “The Account Book of James Northcote,” 62. 34 See Bowyer, Exhibition of Pictures, 13; Linwood Inventory, 25. In addition to Northcote’s painting, Bowyer’s exhibition featured two other depictions of Lady Jane. Linwood owned David Hume’s History of England (1806), which she may have also used as source material, for it contained a portrait of Lady Jane. 35 Biographical Sketches, 32. 36 Linwood Inventory, 30. 37 8D40/1 April 24, 1805, letter from Linwood to William Tassie, The Record Office for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland. On June 1, 1805, the Lancaster Gazette reported, “Hubert and Arthur. Northcote. Bought by Miss Linwood—101 guineas.” Also see Farington, The Diary of Joseph Farington, vol. 6, June 30, 1810. The Hubert and Arthur painting was first exhibited at the Shakespeare Gallery and then passed into the hands of Tassie, who had won the collection in a lottery. Owning the painting allowed Linwood to work on her embroidered version without a hard deadline. For more information of Linwood’s ownership of the painting, see Lupton, Hubert and Arthur. 38 Linwood Inventory, 30; Ledbury, James Northcote, History Painting, and the Fables, 90; Simon, “The Account Book of James Northcote,” 66, 68–80; and Gwynn, Memorials of an Eighteenth-Century Painter, 274–6. Linwood bought Jacob Blessing the Sons of Joseph (RA 1797) so that she could make a copy of it for her gallery. Linwood purchased it for £21, while the Goring scene (one of three by Northcote) cost £9.9s. In 1799, a Mr. Linwood bought A Spaniel Dog for £9.9. 39 Simon, “The Account Book of James Northcote,” 62. 40 See Advertisement for “Rivers of England” Published by W. B. Cooke. 41 Northcote’s Hubert and Arthur (now in the Royal Shakespeare Collection) measures 8’4” by 5’11 inches. His other two versions were also life-sized. See Illustrated Catalogue, 47. Geoffrey and John were the third and fourth sons of King Henry II and Eleanor of Aquataine. 42 Biographical Sketches, 16. 43 Ibid., 33.

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44 It is almost certain that Phillips and Linwood knew each other before leaving for France. His first art teacher was Francis Eginton of Birmingham, who had worked with Boulton on early prototypes of mechanical paintings that Linwood may have also utilized as a basis for her textiles. 45 Peach, Annette. “Phillips, Thomas (1770–1845), Portrait Painter.” Most of Phillips’s portraits of Napoleon were made upon his return to England in 1803. The portraits were commissioned by several aristocratic patrons, including the Duke of Northumberland and the Lords Hastings, Egremont, Talbot, and Erskine. The version made for Egremont is in the collection at Petworth. One of the preparatory sketches is in the collection at the Musée Bonnat. No prints of the Phillips portrait were made. 46 The medal may have been one of the many listed on page 23 of the Linwood Inventory. Or perhaps instead of receiving the Freedom of Paris, she was instead given a Napoleon, a twenty-franc gold coin first minted in March of 1803. 47 M. Linwood to M. Boulton, March 2, 1803, MS3782/12, MBFP, BRO. 48 Napoleon held the position of First Consul between November 1799 and May 1804. In Ingres’s c. 1803–04 portrait of the leader, he is seen in this uniform. 49 Linwood Inventory, 27. Linwood owned a guide to Lucien Bonaparte’s art collection with the inscription “A gift to Miss Linwood by L. Bonaparte.” Lucien settled in Ludlow between 1810 and 1814 during one of his numerous spats with his brother. Lucien’s art collection was auctioned in London in 1815. For more on it, see EdeleinBadie, La collection de tableaux de Lucien Bonaparte. 50 Linwood’s catalogue from 1831 includes these excerpts, which were likely from two compilations in Linwood’s library at the Priory. 51 Linwood rarely expressed any political beliefs, in line with early nineteen-century behavioral expectations for women. The two apparent exceptions were both associated with Anglo-French conflict: the creation of the Phillips portrait of Napoleon and the military standard that she embroidered for the Leicester Yeomanry in 1793. 52 Ford and Hodson, A History of Enfield, 98. 53 Bryne/Lee, A Scientific, Antiquarian, and Picturesque Tour, 290. 54 Biographical Sketches, 17. 55 Linwood Inventory, 30. 56 Biographical Sketches, 32. 57 For example, see Reni, Saint Peter. 58 Biographical Sketches, 18. 59 Mannings, Sir Joshua Reynolds, 2: 47–8. Linwood’s image resembles figure 1092 in Mannings (now at Althorp) and figure 1094 (untraced) by Northcote rather than the original painting (figure 1088). 60 Ibid., 2: 542–3. Johnson’s 1765 edition of Shakespeare may have been the impetus for Reynolds’s initial depiction of Lear; Reynolds wrote several notes for this publication. Although Reynolds participated in the exhibitions at Macklin’s Poets’ Gallery and Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery, his King Lear was not exhibited in either of these venues. Mannings also suggests that Linwood replicated the Lear based on an 1813 British Institution replica of Reynolds’ painting by an unknown artist. See Sharp, King Lear for Sharp’s engraving. 61 Bryne/Lee, A Scientific, Antiquarian, and Picturesque Tour, 290. 62 See Mannings, Sir Joshua Reynolds, 2: 535–6.

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63 Ibid., 2:532–3. 64 Taylor, Leicester Square, 461. 65 Chambers and Chambers, Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal, 70–1. 66 Biographical Sketches, 27–8. 67 Ibid., 22. 68 Bryne/Lee, A Scientific, Antiquarian, and Picturesque Tour, 290. 69 John Murphy’s colored mezzotint of July 23, 1798 is very similar to Dixon’s version, but it was published four months after the opening of Linwood’s Hanover Square exhibition, making it very unlikely that it was the source for her textile. 70 DE3214/10493, September 18, 1792, letter from H. Noel to E. Noel, The Record Office for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland. 71 Biographical Sketches, 33–4. 72 Lennox-Boyd et al., George Stubbs, 39, 140. Stubbs first exhibited Lions and Lionesses at the Society of Artists in 1772, before the painting was quickly sold to a private collector, making it unlikely that Linwood used it as a prototype. The misidentification of animals in Stubbs’s paintings, however, makes it difficult to identify the exact source of Linwood’s replicas. For more on this topic, see Sorrell, “A Zebra, a Tigress and a Cheetah,” 103. 73 Houston’s version of the print sold for one guinea. Colored prints were available at Bowles and Carver for two shillings. 74 Egerton, George Stubbs, Painter, 294–9. 75 Gunnis, Dictionary of British Sculptors, 1660–1851, 290. Little is known about Parbury, who exhibited at the Society of Artists between 1764 and 1771, displaying images of Africa at the 1766 and 1768 shows. A July 8, 1793, letter in the Birmingham Record Office from Parbury to Boulton suggests that he completed more than one commission for the entrepreneur. 76 Thomas, Witnessing Slavery, 6. Thomas describes the age of abolitionism in England as the years between 1770 and 1840. In 1787, the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was established there. Twenty years later, Parliament passed the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, which led to a gradual eradication of the practice. 77 Vice, The Coinage of British West Africa, 19–35; Symons, “The Anti-Slavery Debate,” 92. The freed slaves had first settled in London and then Nova Scotia before relocating to the west coast of Africa. The year 1791 was used to designate the establishment of the colony, even though the currency was not minted until the following year. Paper money replaced coinage after 1793, for as a British colony, Sierra Leone was repeatedly attacked by the French, who sought to steal their silver assets. Parbury likely designed the imagery on the reverse of the coin. 78 Symes, “The Colonial Paper Money of Sierra Leone.” The coin was an interesting hybrid, for the Company Directors wanted to tie it to the Spanish American dollar, although each dollar was composed of sixty pence or five shillings. For Boulton’s views on slavery, see Symons, “The Anti-Slavery Debate.” Boulton had several abolitionist publications and attended the Birmingham lecture of freed slave Olaudah Equiano in 1789 who spoke of his enslaved brethren. Boulton’s friends and fellow members of the Lunar Society Joseph Priestly and Josiah Wedgwood were very active in the abolitionist movement. 79 Sierra Leone stemmed from a misspelling of its original name which had been coined in 1462, when Portuguese explorers named the area around Freetown Harbor after the hills around it.

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80 MS3782/12, M. Linwood to M. Boulton, February 6, 1798, MBFP, BRO; Clay and Tungate, 86. In this letter, Linwood wrote, “The Dye of the Lion, which we look’d at, will do, as well as any thing you can put, the person who show’d them said it could be made larger by a Broader Rim-.” Dies were made of steel to fit a coining press and created medals when struck. 81 Linwood Inventory, 29. 82 Biographical Sketches, 21. 83 Linwood Inventory, 30; Barker, “Documents Relating to Joseph Wright of Derby,” 22, 34. Wright of Derby’s account book contains several references to Linwood, but his arbitrarily dated accounts make it impossible to determine when she acquired Cottage on Fire. 84 Biographical Sketches, 23.

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Vickery, Amanda. “The Theory and Practice of Female Accomplishment.” In Mrs. Delany and Her Circle, edited by Mark Laird and Alicia Weisberg Roberts, 94–109. New Haven and London: Yale Center for British Art and Yale University Press, 2009. Walker, Linda Robinson. “Why Was Jane Austen Sent away to School at Seven?” Persuasions On-line, 26, no. 1 (2005). Accessed May 18, 2018. https://jasna.org/ persuasions/on-line/vol26no1/walker.htm. Wallace, Beth Kowaleski. “Representing Corporal ‘Truth’ in the Work of Anna Morandi Manzolini and Madame Tussaud.” In Women and Material Culture of Death, edited by Maureen Daly Goggin and Beth Fowkes Tobin, 283–309. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013. Wallace Collection. “To Copy or Not to Copy? Reproducing Eighteenth-Century French Furniture.” Accessed August 14, 2014. http://wallacecollection.org/blog/2014/03/tocopy-or-not-to-copy-reproducing-eighteenth-century-french-furniture/. Walpole, Horace. Anecdotes of Painting. Edited by James Dallaway and Ralph N. Wornum. Vol. 3. London: Chatto and Windus, 1862. Warwick and Warwickshire Advertiser. June 14, 1845. Waterfield, Giles, Dulwich Picture Gallery, and National Gallery of Scotland. Palaces of Art: Art Galleries in Britain, 1790–1990. London: Dulwich Picture Gallery, 1991. Watts, Susannah. An Autumnal Scene: Written upon Viewing Miss Linwood’s Picture of the Gleaner. N.p., n.d. Watts, Susannah. A Walk through Leicester. Leicester: T. Combe, 1804. Wedd, Kit, with Lucy Peltz and Catherine Ross. Artists’ London: Holbein to Hirst. London: Merrell, 2001. Whitcomb, Norma R. Mary Linwood. Leicester: Collingwood & Son, 1951. White, Carolyn, and Mary Beaudry. “Artifacts and Personal Identity.” In International Handbook of Historical Archaeology, edited by Teresita Majewski and David R. M. Gaimster, 209–25. Berlin: Springer, 2009. Whitley, William Thomas. Thomas Gainsborough. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1915. Whitman, Alfred. Nineteenth Century Mezzotinters: Charles Turner. London: George Bell & Sons, 1907. Accessed August 1, 2019. https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/ collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?assetId=275621001&objectId=30303 40&partId=1. WikiArt. “Study for King Lear.” Accessed February 1, 2022. https://www.wikiart.org/en/ joshua-reynolds/study-for-king-lear. Will of Mary Linwood. n.d. PROB 11/2019/315 (UK National Archives). Wilson, John Human. “The Life and Work of John Hoppner (1758–1810).” PhD diss., Courtauld Institute of Art, 1992. Wilton, Andrew. The Art of Alexander and John Robert Cozens. New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, 1980. Winter, David. George Morland. PhD dissertation, Stanford University, 1977. Winters, Keith. “Matthew Linwood.” Meredith of Herefordshire. Accessed July 12, 2012. http://www.winters-online.net/MerH/g1/p48.htm#i2357. Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman with Strictures on Moral and Political Subjects. London: Joseph Johnson, 1792. Wykes, David L. “‘Trade Flat, Money Scarce, Spirits Low’: The Journal of John Kirby of Leicester, 1813–1848.” Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society 64, no. 44 (1990): 53–5.

228

Selected Bibliography

Yarrington, Alison. “Anne Seymour Damer: A Sculptor of ‘Republican Perfection’.” In Bluestockings Displayed: Portraiture, Performance and Patronage 1730–1830, edited by Elizabeth Eger, 81–99. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Yarrington, Alison. “The Female Pygmalion: Anne Seymour Damer, Allan Cunningham and the Writing of a Woman Sculptor’s Life.” Sculpture Journal 1, no. 1 (1997): 32–44. Yeldham, Charlotte. “Women Artists in Nineteenth-Century France and England.” PhD dissertation, Courtauld Institute, 1984. Zeibner, G. B. The Ladies’ Work-table Book: Containing Clear and Practical Instructions in Plain and Fancy Needlework, Embroidery, Knitting, Netting, and Crochet. With Numerous Engraving. Philadelphia: G. B. Zeibner, 1845.

Index advertisements for exhibition 33–4, 42, 51, 72–3, 121 Aikins, Lucy 86, 87 Altick, Richard, The Shows of London 121 amateur/professional art 3–4, 8, 29, 36, 47–50, 126, 130 art collection 5, 124–5 Art Embroidery 127–30 art history 3–4, 129–30 British 11 commercialization of 45 material objects and practices 9 audience with Queen Charlotte 23–4, 29, 31 Austen, Jane, Sense and Sensibility 18 Balnea 58, 63 Barker, Robert 73 Barker, Thomas, Woodman 83, 131 Barrell, John 82, 85 Bayeux Tapestry 113, 168 n.1 Beale, Mary Cradock 48 Beechey, William 19, 53 portrait of Linwood 58–9 Berlin wool work. See needlework/ needle painting Bermingham, Ann 19, 50, 77, 79, 166 n.31, 175 n.86 blanketing technique 26, 60, 80, 84 boarding school 4, 11, 15–16, 64, 69, 96, 115, 171 n.32, 175 n.89. See also Priory boarding school Bond, John Daniel, Landscape with Pastoral Figures 32, 131–2 Borzello, Frances 44 Boultbee, John, Horse and Dog 132 Boulton, Matthew 11, 16, 20, 54 Hobday and 186 n.17 and Linwood families 20–3 mentor and friend to Linwood 63–6, 68, 70, 161

Priestly’s friendship with 172 n.38 Wynn and 172 n.39 Bourdieu, Pierre 11, 168 n.54 British art and culture 1, 5, 11, 12, 29, 63, 67–70, 75, 76, 82, 85, 91, 95–6, 125 British Folk Art exhibition 9 Broom, Herbert 69–70, 122 Broude, Norma 4 Buck, Adam 19 Burne-Jones, Edward 13, 128 Burton, James 65, 67 Butler, Judith 9 camera obscura/pinhole camera 97, 103 Carey, Londoner George Saville, Balnea, Or, an Impartial Description of All the Popular Watering Places in England 63 Carracci, Ludovico 12 Deposition of Christ 92, 110–12, 133 Catton, Charles, Pomeranian Dog 133–4 Cecil, Henry 35–6, 104, 136 Chambers, Robert, The Book of Days 6–7 Chambers, William 95, 155 Chichester, Anna May 67 Christ Church in hometown 116, 199 n.41 Cluckie, Linda 8, 166 n.35 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 89 Colley, Linda 1, 70 Constable, John 5, 74 and Linwood’s friendship 46–7 Cooper, Richard, Two Landscape Scenes 134 Copley, John Singleton 31, 49 copying/artistic copy 7–8, 26, 56, 93, 101, 109, 112–13 connoisseurs and 35–6 gendering of 8–10 Cosway, Maria Hadfield 53 and Linwood’s friendship 44–6, 55 Lodona 44, 55–6, 134–5 Mary Linwood 29

230

Index

Cosway, Richard 44 Cottage, Leicester Square Gallery A Boy with a Cat—Morning 77–82 Children at the Fire 77–82 A Dog-From Nature 78 Kirby on 78 in Leicester Square: Its Association and Its Worthies 77–8 Cotton, Charles, To a Child of Five Years Old 81–2 Cowper, William 84 Cozens, Alexander 77 Landscape Scenes 135 New Method of Assisting the Invention of Drawing Original Compositions of Landscape 32 Crane, Walter 13, 128 Crary, Jonathan 7, 165 n.21 cultural patriotism. See patriotism Cunningham, Allan 47

girls’ education and 17–20 machines 126–9, 204 n.60 Morris and 126–30 professional embroiderers 169 n.4 stitches of 166 n.35 worsted wool 16, 169 n.10 entrepreneurial and artistic strategies 15–16 Erskine, David Steuart 67 exhibitions/gallery 3, 10, 65–70, 201 n.6 advertisements for 33–4, 42, 51, 54–6, 74 Dublin exhibitions 67, 91, 146–7, 196 Edinburgh show 65–7 guide and catalogues 4, 12 innovative techniques 5, 126–7 publications 58–63 ticket revenues 3, 12, 34, 48, 51, 68–9, 74, 108, 115, 121, 164 n.7, 189 n.76, 197 n.5

Damer, Anne Seymour 47, 53, 182 n.99 Darwin, Erasmus 20 Delany, Mary 19, 127 de Loutherbourg, Philip James 3, 31, 73–4, 78 Eidophusikon 73, 192 n.45 DeLuc, Jean-André 22–4 de Piles, Roger 101 de Wint, Peter 118–19 Dickens, Charles 121 Dolci, Carlo 104 David with His Sling 104, 135–6 Our Saviour Blessing the Bread and Wine (Salvator Mundi) 12, 35, 40, 42, 95, 104–9, 136 Draper, Helen 48, 50 Dublin exhibitions 67, 91, 146–7, 196

familial environment 15–16 Farington, Joseph 39–40, 43, 70, 71, 78, 138 Farrell-Skeffington, Charles 36–7, 178 n.42 Feltham, John 43 financial obligations/success 3–4, 11–12, 23, 35, 41, 67, 71–2, 86, 104, 115, 130, 187 n.42, 203 n.40 Flower, John 117–19 Folk Art Show 11, 129 Frederickson, Kristen, Singular Women: Writing the Artist 13 Frye, Susan 9 Pens and Needles 15

Edgeworth, Maria 18 Edinburgh show 65–7, 161, 189 n.76 educational goals 16–20, 125, 175 n.78 Priory and Linwood’s students 115–20 embroidery/embroiderers 11, 113, 173 n.56. See also needlework/ needle painting Bayeux Tapestry 113, 168 n.1 embroiderer’s scrapbook 89–90 feminine craft 8–9

Gainsborough, Thomas 3, 5, 31, 76, 179 n.58 A Boy with a Cat—Morning 77–80, 82, 84 Children [Warming Themselves] at the Fire 77–9, 84, 137 Cottage Children with an Ass 82, 84, 89–90, 137 Country Child (Girl and Cat) 80–1, 137 in the English landscape 77 Head of Woodman 136 Landscape 138

Index paintings 8 replicas in main gallery 87–90 A Shepherd (Shepherd’s Boy in a Storm) 82, 84, 87–9, 138 Woodman in a Storm 40, 42, 54, 78, 82–7, 137 gallery(ies) 1, 11. See also exhibitions/ gallery commercial galleries 40–1 Linwood’s embroidered copies in 25 promoting 63–8 Gallini, John 40 Gardiner, William 21 Gay, John, Rural Sports: A Georgic 92–3 gendering of the artistic copy 8–10, 127, 129 Gentleman’s Magazine 95 Gilpin, William 40, 79 Godwin, William 43 Goggin, Maureen Daly 9 Greenberg, Clement 8 Grimaldi, William 53 Gruskin, Nancy 13 Guérin, Jean Baptiste Paulin, The Judgment Upon Cain 121, 138–9 Hanover Square exhibition 10, 11, 39–43, 64, 95, 97, 100, 109 Lion coins in 161 Our Saviour Blessing the Bread and Wine 104–5 portraiture and 53–7 publications and 58–63 ticket sales 69 Woodman 84 Haughton, Moses 32 Dead Partridges 141 Fox Tearing a Cock 140–1 Hare 22, 32, 139–40 Oysters 32, 141 Woodcocks and Kingfisher 140 Hedquist, Valerie 41, 167 n.46 Heilmann, Josué 204 n.60 Hemingway, Andrew 74 Hill, Thomas 59 History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester 37 Hobday, William Armfield 53, 55–7, 99, 186 n.17

231

Hone, Nathaniel, The Conjurer 103 Hoppner, John 54, 185 n.3 The Frankland Sisters 185 n.8 portrait of Linwood 5, 19, 53–5, 185 n.7 Hume, Robert 33–4, 177 n.26 Hunter, Matthew 103 Jackson, Grapes 141–2 Katherine of Aragon 15 Kauffman, Angelica 4, 36, 49, 165 n.14, 178 n.37 Kirby, Mary 78, 116–17, 119–20 Knowles, Mary 61, 127 Ladies Albums. See scrapbook Lady’s Magazine or Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex 19 Lady’s Monthly Museum 19, 58–62 Lake Poets 195 n.99 Lee, John Fiott 5, 109, 136, 146–7, 152, 154, 158, 165 n.16, 188 n.61 Leicester Journal 116, 123 Leicester Museum (New Walk Museum) 11 Leicester Square Gallery 1–2, 15, 38, 62–3, 65, 69 acquisition and renovation 5, 69–76 advertisement for 74 Aikin on 87 British identity in 1, 12, 67–70, 76 Cottage Children with an Ass 87, 89–90 demise of 120–2 Dens 5, 69, 73, 76, 155 feminine identity 2 Gainsborough Replicas in 87–90 Gothic Room 5, 7, 12, 69, 73, 77, 115 guidebooks 72–3 illustrations 5–6 opening of 30, 69 pastoral pictures 77–82 (see also Cottage, Leicester Square Gallery) pedagogical goals for 4 picturesque effect 6–7 portraits of royal prisoners 5, 7 Scripture Room (see Scripture Room) Shepherd’s Boy in a Storm 87–9 Thomson on 85–6 ticket price 74, 121 Watts on 87

232

Index

The Linwood Gallery of Pictures in NeedleWork and a Biographical Sketch of the Painters 5, 10, 75–6, 87, 89, 91, 112 Linwood, Hannah 16–20, 66–7, 189 n.75 Bunch of Grapes 141–2 Linwood Inventory 169 n.14, 169–70 n.14, 170 n.15, 170 n.15, 179 n.59, 180 n.63, 203 n.47, 206 n.15, 208 n.49 Linwood, Matthew 16 Literary Chronicle 80 London Evening Mail 60 Loraine Smith, Charles 36–7 Litter of Foxes 38–9 Lorenzetti, Ambrogio, Allegory of Good and Bad Government 91 Lunar Society 20 Macklin’s Poets Gallery 10, 33–4, 40–1, 44, 84, 149 male/female artist 8, 13, 47–8, 50, 130, 173 n.55 Mansfield, Elizabeth 129, 205 n.81 Maratti, Carlo, Nativity 12, 95, 110–12, 144 Markland, Sarah 64 Martin, John, Belshazzar’s Feast 74 Material Literacy in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Dyer and Wigston Smith) 9 Maynard, Lord 37 memorials 122–4 Millar, James, A Carp 32, 144–5 Milton Gallery 56 Mola, Francisco, Landscape 145–6 monograph trap 13 Monthly Mirror 26, 58–60 More, Hannah 18 Morland, George 38, 77, 82 Dogs at Play 93, 146 Dogs Watching 91–2, 146 The Farmer’s Stable 91, 146 Kennel of Dogs 92 A Litter of Foxes 38, 147 Setters 92 Morning Chronicle 54, 203 n.52 Morning Post 75, 77, 96, 122 Morris, William 13 Art and Socialism 128 and Art Embroidery 127–30 Moser, Mary 4, 36, 49, 165 n.14 Mure-Campbell, Flora 66

needlework/needle painting 1, 3, 69, 121, 166 n.26, 169 n.5 discursive functions of 10 Morris’s 127–30 of popular paintings 1 prints and 19 teaching 11, 17–20 technological and aesthetic changes 126–30 textual discourse of 9 Nochlin, Linda 4, 129–30 Noel, Henry 34–5, 84 Northcote, James Arthur and Hubert 148 Lady Jane Gray 147–8 oil paintings 16, 19–20, 47 Opie, John Eloisa, the Subject Taken from Pope’s Celebrated Poem 33, 149 Jephtha’s Rash Vow 149 Opus anglicanum (English work) 15 Page, Samuel 70 Palmer, Bond 115–18 Palmer, Edmund Seymour 118 Pantheon exhibition 10, 11, 26, 29, 104 advertisements for 33–4 British artists portraits 32 guidebook 31–2 historical portraits 33 King Lear 97 landscape paintings 77 patriotism and 30–1 private art collections 34 replicas at 32 ticket price 34 Parbury, George 160–1, 209 n.75 Parker, Roszika, The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine 9 Passavant, Johann David 104 patriotism 1, 3, 11–12, 29, 33–4, 40–1, 69, 74, 76, 115 Pery, Edmund Henry 109 Peters, Matthew William, The Fortune Teller/s 149 Phillips, Richard, Picture of London 73–4

Index Phillips, Thomas, Napoleon 77, 125, 150–2, 208 n.45 pictorial embroidery 3 poetry collection 74–5 Pointon, Marcia 10 Pollock, Griselda 4 polygraph 97, 102–3 Pope, Alexander 33, 92 The Shepherd and the Philosopher 92 Windsor Forest 44, 91 portrait/portraiture and self-portrait 10, 24–7, 36, 53, 69, 174 n.75 publicizing honor in image 54–7 Preziosi, Donald, “Unmaking Art History” 130 Priestley, Joseph 20 Priory boarding school 16–22 Cozens’s method drawings 32 Hannah Linwood and 171 n.32 and Linwood’s students 115–20 poetry collection at 74 social balancing act 26 private art collections 34, 44, 51, 113 professional artist/professional artistic activity 4, 29, 56, 67, 130, 182 n.99 professionalism 47–51, 182 n.93 professional success/goals 4, 29, 53, 56, 58, 64, 69 promotional activities 29, 45–6, 51, 53, 56, 60, 63–8 publications 58–63 public exhibition 23, 34 public success 11, 36 Queen Adelaide 116, 121 Queen Anne 44 Queen Charlotte 11, 22, 69, 174 n.62 Linwood’s audience with 23–4, 29, 31 Queen Elizabeth I 15 Queen Mary 15, 148 Raphael 12 Madonna della Sedia 104, 109–10, 151–2 Rawdon-Hastings, Francis 66 Rawdon, Lady Charlotte 66 Raymond, Eleanor 13 Reinagle, Philip, An American Owl 152 religious art 74, 95. See also Scripture Room

233

Rembrandt An Old Woman Reading: The Prophetess Hannah 152–3 Girl at a Window 101 Reni, Guido, Head of St. Peter 33, 103–4, 153 Reynolds, Joshua 8 Discourses 96–7, 113 Girl and Kitten 100, 102, 154–5 King Lear 21–2, 33, 95 Lady Sarah Bunbury Sacrificing to the Graces 24 Laughing Girl (Girl Leaning on a Pedestal) 100–2, 113, 154 Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse 24 Portrait of Lady Diana Beauclerk 56 Self Portrait 95, 98–9 Sleeping Girl 100, 102, 154–5 Richardson, Samuel 18, 37 Ridley, William 58, 59, 62 Rigaud, John Francis 49 Roach, Catherine 3 Robinson, Mary, “Present State of the Manners, Society, Etc., Etc. of the Metropolis of England” 53, 60 Rosenthal, Angela 4 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Emile, or, On Education 18 Royal Academy of Arts 3, 23, 26, 30, 32–3, 36, 39, 45, 47, 166 n.25, 178 n.40 exhibition of copies 96–7 landscape painting at 77 miniatures at 65 A Portrait of a Lady 56 Royal School of Art Needlework (RSAN) 9, 13, 128–9 Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce (RSEAMC) exhibition 22, 32 Royal Society of Art 173 n.55 Rubens, Landscape by Moonlight 35, 109, 155 Ruisdael, Jacob, Sea Piece: Brisk Gale 155 Russell, John 22 Cottage Girl/Frugal Fare 157–8 Girl Weeping over a Starved Goldfinch 156–7 (Self) Portrait of Mary Linwood 24–7, 36, 156

234

Index

Savile House. See Leicester Square Gallery Scott, Joan Wallach 9 scrapbook 89–90 Scripture Room 12, 69, 74 Deposition of Christ 110–12 Nativity 110–12 Our Saviour Blessing the Bread and Wine (Dolci) 95, 104–9 religious art 95, 104 St. Peter 103–4 self-portrait 24–7, 54, 99, 117. See also portrait/portraiture and selfportrait Shakespeare Gallery 10, 56 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley 72, 78 Sheriff, Mary 4 Shorleyker, Richard, A Schole-House for the Needle 169 n.5 Singleton, Henry 183 n.110, 184 n.113, 184 n.117 Inside of a Gentleman’s Study 11, 29, 36–9, 147 Portrait of Daniel Lambert 158 The Royal Academicians in General Assembly 29, 49 Sloan, Kim 47 Smith, Charles Loraine 11, 147 social mobility 11, 15–20, 62, 99 social status 3, 29, 56 Society of Artists exhibitions 22, 173 n.55 Sofer, Andrew 7 Somerville, William, The Chace 93, 100, 142, 197 n.120 South Kensington Museum 128 Spies-Gans, Paris 4 The State of the Arts painting 36–9 Stothard, Thomas 31, 41 Stubbs, George 6 Lion and Lionesses 76, 159–61 Tygress 35, 76, 158–9 Taylor, Londoner Tom, Leicester Square: Its Association and Its Worthies 77–8 technological innovations 5, 126–7 Thackeray, William Makepeace 121 Thomson, James, Seasons 85 Tobin, Beth Fowkes 9 Tomkins, Pietro 53, 55–7, 186 n.19 Trumbull, George 31

Turner, Hannah 16, 80, 158 Turner, John 16 Turner, Mary E. 128 Tussaud, Marie 7, 64–5, 121, 165 n.22 Vasari, Giorgio 4 Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects 47–8 Vernet, Claude-Joseph, Landscape-Sea through a Rock 161 Vickery, Amanda 19, 50, 166 n.31, 184 n.119 Vigée-LeBrun, Elizabeth 65 Wardle, Thomas 205 n.82 Watt, James 20 Watts, Susannah An Autumnal Scene: Written Upon Viewing Miss Linwood’s Picture of the Gleaner 86 Poems on the Abolition of the Slave Trade 86 Wedgwood, Josiah 20 Westall, Richard 53, 55–6 Gleaner and Child 78, 86, 162 Woman and Child (Harvesters) Sheltering from a Storm 56, 86, 162 Wilkie, David, The Chelsea Pensioners Reading the Waterloo Dispatch 74 Willow, Thomas 69–70, 122 Wilson, Richard, Landscape View in Wales 32, 162 women’s participation 46–50, 53, 58 journals/periodical and 18–19, 58–60, 62, 126 woolen thread works 25–6, 30, 54, 84, 99, 126. See also embroidery/ embroiderers work of Linwood 3–4, 53 An Old Woman Reading: The Prophetess Hannah (Rembrandt) 152–3 Arthur and Hubert (Northcote) 148 A Boy with a Cat—Morning (Gainsborough) 77–80, 84–5 Bunch of Grapes 141–2 Charlotte at Werther’s Tomb 143–4 Children [Warming Themselves] at the Fire (Gainsborough) 77–8, 84

Index Cottage Children with an Ass (Gainsborough) 82, 89–90 Cottage Girl/Frugal Fare (Russell) 157–8 Cottage in Flames (Wright of Derby) 41 David (Dolci) 104 Dead Hare (Haughton) 21 A Dog-From Nature 78 Dogs at Play (Morland) 93, 146 Dog [Spaniel]-from Nature 143 Dogs Watching (Morland) 91–2, 146–7 drawing of Skeffington Hall 37 Eloisa, the Subject Taken from Pope’s Celebrated Poem (Opie) 149 embroidered replicas 9, 22, 24–5, 54–5, 97, 100, 124 of English authors and British artists 75 The Farmer’s Stable (Morland) 91, 146 Fox Alarmed Stealing from a Shelter 142 Gainsborough’s paintings, copies of 76–8, 82 Girl and Cat 80–1 Girl and Kitten (Reynolds) 100, 102, 154–5 Girl Weeping over a Starved Goldfinch (Russell) 156–7 Gleaner and Child (Westall) 56, 86, 162 Head of St. Peter (Reni) 103–4, 153 Italian Renaissance and Baroque paintings 12 Jephtha’s Rash Vow (Opie) 149 The Judgment Upon Cain (Guérin) 121 Kennel of Dogs (Morland) 92 King Lear (Reynolds) 21–2, 33, 95, 97–8, 101, 154 Lady Jane Gray (Northcote) 147–8 Landscape (Mola) 21, 145–6 Landscape-A Fishing Party 142 Landscape by Moonlight (Rubens) 35, 109, 155 Landscape, Effect of Moonlight (Wright of Derby) 41, 163 on landscape paintings 77 Laughing Girl (Reynolds) 100–2, 113, 154 Lion and Lionesses (Stubbs) 76, 159–61

235

A Litter of Foxes (Morland and Loraine Smith) 38, 147 Lodona (Cosway) 44, 55–6 Madonna della Sedia (Raphael) 109–10, 151–2 on miniatures 65 Morland replicas 90–3 Mt. Vesuvius (Wright of Derby) 41, 163 Napoleon (Phillips) 65, 77, 125, 150–2 Nativity (Maratti) 110–12, 144 oil painting 9, 16, 54 Our Saviour Blessing the Bread and Wine/Salvator Mundi (Dolci) 95, 104–9, 112 and pantograph 172 n.50 religious art 103–13 Reynolds replicas 96–103, 109 Reynolds Self-Portrait (Reynolds) 95, 98–9, 101, 153–4 Russell’s portrait replica 24–7, 36, 156 Salvator Mundi (Dolci) 12, 35, 101 Sea Piece: Brisk Gale (Ruisdael) 155 Sea Through a Rock (Vernet) 76 Setters (Morland) 92 A Shepherd (Gainsborough) 82 Sleeping Girl (Reynolds) 100, 102, 155 Tygress (Stubbs) 35, 76, 159 A View of Mt. Vesuvius (Wright of Derby) 41 Virgil’s Tomb by Moonlight (Wright of Derby) 41, 163 Woman and Child (Harvesters) Sheltering from a Storm (Westall) 56, 86, 162 on woodman subject 82–7 Wright of Derby, Joseph Cottage in Flames 31–2, 42, 162–3 Landscape, Effect of Moonlight 41, 163 Mt. Vesuvius 41, 163 Virgil’s Tomb by Moonlight 41, 163 Yarrington, Alison 48 Yates, Lady Elizabeth Baldwyn 62, 62 Zoffany, Johann Portrait of the Royal Academicians 49 Royal Academicians in General Assembly 130

236

237

238

239

240

Plate 1  The long gallery from The Linwood Gallery of Pictures in Needlework: With a biographical sketch of the painters (1811), Mary Linwood, Photo: Yale Center for British Art.

Plate 2  Self Portrait, c. 1786, Mary Linwood, Collection of Tim & Robin Farina, Photo: Tim & Robin Farina.

Plate 3  Self Portrait (detail), c. 1786, Mary Linwood, Collection of Tim & Robin Farina, Photo: Tim & Robin Farina.

Plate 4  The Dens from The Linwood Gallery of Pictures in Needlework: With a biographical sketch of the painters (1811), Mary Linwood, Yale Center for British Art.

Plate 5  Inside of a Gentleman’s Study, 1793, Henry Singleton, Private Collection.

Plate 6  King Lear, c. 1785, Mary Linwood, replica after Sir Joshua Reynolds, Bowes Museum.

Plate 7  King Lear (detail), c. 1785, Mary Linwood, replica after Sir Joshua Reynolds, © Bowes Museum.

Plate 8  Mary Linwood, c. 1785, John Russell, Private Collection.

Plate 9  The Royal Academicians in General Assembly, 1795, Henry Singleton, © Royal Academy of Arts.

Plate 10  Woodman, 1800, Mary Linwood, replica after Thomas Gainsborough, Leicester Museums and Galleries.

Plate 11  Napoleon, c. 1802, Mary Linwood, replica after Thomas Phillips (1st  copy), Victoria and Albert Museum.

Plate 12  Salvator Mundi, 1789, Mary Linwood, replica after Carlo Dolci, © Royal Collection Trust/His Majesty King Charles III.

Plate 13  Salvator Mundi (detail), 1789, Mary Linwood, replica after Carlo Dolci, © Royal Collection Trust/His Majesty King Charles III.

Plate 14  Country Child (Girl with a Cat), 1809, Mary Linwood, replica after Thomas Gainsborough, Leicester Museums and Galleries.

Plate 15  David with His Sling, 1789, Mary Linwood, replica after Carlo Dolci, Leicester Museums and Galleries.

Plate 16  Tygress, c. 1792–3, Mary Linwood, replica after George Stubbs, Yale Center for British Art.