Catherine 'Kitty' Hunter, Lady Clarke (1740-1795)
Nathaniel Hone the elder, RA (Dublin 1718 – London 1784)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1780 (signed and dated on reverse)
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
749 x 622 mm (29 ½ x 24 ½ in)
Place of origin
Great Britain
Order this imageCollection
Ickworth, Suffolk
NT 851928
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Catherine 'Kitty' Hunter, Lady Clarke (1740-1795) by Nathaniel Hone the elder, RA (Dublin 1718 – London 1784), signed and dated (on reverse): N.Hone pinx 1780. A half-length portrait of a mature woman, seated in a chair against a dark background. She has curly brown hair visible under a greyish headdress with two bows, one above the other, at centre, and tied under the chin with a third bow. She wears a brownish gown with a v-necked collar and three-quarter-length sleeves. A small miniature hanging from a narrow thread around her neck, is held sideways in her right hand. The left hand, lying across her lap, supports the right arm. Catherine (‘Kitty’) Hunter, Lady Clarke was the daughter of an Admiralty Lord. Her association with Augustus Hervey, later 3rd Lord Bristol, must have begun soon after 1763 on her return from France, where she had eloped with Lord Pembroke. Her son by Augustus Hervey, ‘Little Augustus’, was born around 1764/5 and is the subject of a small octagonal portrait by Gainsborough at Ickworth. She finally married Field-Marshal Sir Alured Clarke. According to Horace Walpole, she had the face of a Madonna.
Provenance
By descent to Rear Admiral Frederick William Fane Hervey, 4th Marquess of Bristol (1863-1951), on whose death valued for probate; accepted in lieu of tax by HM Treasury, and transferred to the National Trust in 1956
Credit line
Ickworth, The Bristol Collection (acquired through the National Land Fund and transferred to The National Trust in 1956)
Makers and roles
Nathaniel Hone the elder, RA (Dublin 1718 – London 1784), artist
References
Farrer 1908 Edmund Farrer, Portraits in Suffolk Houses (West), 1908, no. 163