Summary

Sculpture, marble; portrait bust of Agnes Molyneux-Seel (née Bedingfeld,1798-1870); Italy, Rome; 1824. A portrait bust of Agnes Bedingfeld, daughter of Sir Richard Bedingfeld, 5th Baronet (1767-1829) and his wife Charlotte Jerningham (1769-1854). Agnes married Thomas Molyneux-Seel in 1823 in Ghent. During their lengthy honeymoon that lasted more than a year, the couple spent time in Rome, where they commissioned a pair of marble portrait busts as well as a pair of painted portraits, also at Oxburgh Hall.. See also the companion bust of Thomas Molyneux Seel (NT 1210517).

Full description

A marble portrait bust of Agnes Molyneux-Seel, born Agnes Bedingfeld (1798-1870). She is shown with her head turned to her right, wearing a thin dress that slips slightly from the left shoulder, and is fastened at the shoulders with buttons. Agnes’s hair is fashioned at the sides into shorter curls before the ears, with one longer pony tail behind each ear. At the back the hair is gathered together into a bun, from which emerge short curls. The bust is inscribed on the back ‘ROMA 1824.’ A pair to the companion bust of her husband Thomas Molyneux-Seel (NT 1210517). Agnes Bedingfeld was the eldest daughter of Sir Richard Bedingfeld, 5th Baronet (1767-1829) and his wife Charlotte Jerningham (1769-1854) of Costessey, later Lady-in-Waiting to Queen Adelaide. Her brother was Sir Henry Paston-Bedingfeld, 6th Baronet (1800-1862). After Waterloo and the raising of restrictions on foreign travel, for reasons of economy Sir Richard let Oxburgh and moved his large family to Belgium, where the Bedingfelds took the château of Lovendighem, near Ghent during the summers. It was during these years that they became friends with Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, who would become the consort of King William IV and, thus, Queen Adelaide, who had her old friend appointed Lady-in-Waiting after her husband had ascended the throne, following the death of George IV in 1830. There are scattered references to Agnes during her childhood and youth in the Jerningham Letters, a compendium mainly of selected letters and diary extracts from or to Frances, Lady Jerningham (1747-1825) and her daughter Charlotte, Agnes Bedingfeld’s mother. In 1813 a relative of the celebrated Ladies of Llangollen (Lady Eleanor Butler (1739–1829) and Sarah Ponsonby (1755–1831)) had visited the Bedingfeld family at their then home in Sidney Place, Bath; the then teenage Agnes seems to have made something of an impression, as two letters from Sarah Ponsonby to Charlotte Jerningham both dwell on her, catching something of her quiet nature, which is noticed in many of the references to her: ‘I have formed Such an idea of that Sweetly diffident, that most interesting little Agnes. Her very Name is to me the Synonime of Perfection.’ (Jerningham 1896, II, p. 27). In 1822 and 1823 Agnes spent much time living with her grandmother, in Lady Frances’s house in Bolton Row in Mayfair, London. It was in 1823 that Agnes married Thomas Molyneux-Seel, J.P. & D.L., of Huyton Hey (1792-1881), a landowner from an old Catholic family, with estates in Lancashire, including Huyton, today part of Liverpool. Born Thomas Unsworth, on inheriting the estates of his maternal ancestors in 1815, he took the name and arms of Molyneux-Seel. The couple’s rapid courtship in the summer of 1823 is referred to in the Jerningham Papers, through a series of letters from Lady Jerningham to her daughter Charlotte (Jerningham 1896, II, pp. 263-67). On June 12, she wrote to tell her about ‘your Little meek Lamb Agnes’ who was ‘I think for the moment, Looking with Complaisance.’ Lady Jerningham went on to explain that ‘Mr Seele Contrives to make Himself so acceptable in Society, that I hear of His being at all the Parties, and numerous balls that are given. Agnes has been at several Lately; and when I question her the next morning of who she danced with, five or six are named & Mr. Seele always one [….] I then perceived in the evening that He appeared to be attentive to Agnes and that her meek Little Spirits were raised by his notice […] Last Night the Ball was at the Dowr Lady Astleys, in Cavendish Square. Agnes has just enumerated five Parteners, Mr. Seele one, now I should not be very much surprised if it finishes by His asking the serious Question’. Lady Jerningham’s concerns were severely practical: ‘A serious objection would be if there is any ground for the fear of Insanity, or that His fortune would not be equivalent to her Future Comfort’, but in a letter written to Charlotte on 24 June, she was able to report that ‘the Suitor has above £100,000 in Cash […] a pretty fund and He is said by every one to be a very respectable Character’. By 8 August, the date of the next letter to Charlotte, the engagement had been agreed, Lady Jerningham commenting that Mr Seel ‘has behaved with a degree of delicacy, worthy of Little Agnes’s retiring modest Character […] I really think there is reason to hope she will be happy with Him, tho’ the income but scantily Covers the want of Aristocracy. But her quietness & his good humour will, I trust, assimilate together.’ The wedding took place on 3 October 1823 in Ghent, the couple setting off the same day for Italy, where they would spend the winter (‘The Mirror of Fashion’, Morning Chronicle, 7 October 1823). They had reached Rome by December 1823, Agnes Seel writing to her mother on 10 December from Rome, reporting that ‘we had some difficulty in finding lodgings but at length succeeded and fortunately found one which exactly suits us. From the drawing room windows we have a delightful view of the magnificent Church St. Peter, which really is quite beautiful and surpasses what I had imagined in my Idea – we generally go to Vespers there, every Sunday, the music is so very delightful. The numbers of English we meet in every Place is astonishing. I was at a Party last night, and could very well have fancied myself in London.’ Agnes went to write that ‘Seel is so well known at Rome, and I must also add so great a favorite of the Italians, that we have not the least difficulty in being introduced into any House and they are all particularly civil to us. I had a present of a large Cake sent me a few days ago in the form of a Cardinal’s Hat, accompanied with a very kind note from one of the first families here, the Countess Massimo.’ (Jerningham 1896, II, pp. 284-85). In a subsequent letter Lady Jerningham records the address of the Seels’ lodgings as 50 via Ripetta. Agnes seems to have given birth to her first son Edmund (1825-1909) in Paris, as she is reported as having arrived back in London with her husband and baby early in 1825 (Castle II, p. 301). Little is known about the Molyneux-Seels’ later lives, but they had a second son in 1830, Charles Molyneux-Seel (1830-1880) and in 1839 a third, Henry Harrington Molyneux-Seel (1839-1882). In a recently rediscovered diary for the years 1829-1839, Agnes’s sister-in-law Lady Margaret Paston-Bedingfeld quite often refers to Agnes and ‘the Seels’, who during this period were frequent visitors to Oxburgh Hall, Agnes spending some time living in a cottage on the estate. On 14 October 1831, Lady Paston-Bedingfeld recorded that ‘The carved oak sideboard and Busts arrived from Lancashire, the former a present from Agnes’. Agnes was often recorded in the diary as unwell. On 5 November 1837, the Paston-Bedingfelds travelled to Lancashire, Margaret Paston-Bedingfeld writing that she had ‘found Agnes just recovering from a bilious attack, looking as usual excessively delicate but clearer & better than I have seen her for some years.’ Nevertheless, Agnes Seel lived to a good age, dying in Leamington Spa on 7 September 1870. In the year of her death, a new Catholic church in Huyton dedicated to Saint Agnes was built, with funds provided by Thomas Molyneux-Seel. It was demolished in 1965 and replaced by a modern building. The anonymous portrait bust is a competent work that captures more than a little of Agnes Bedingfeld’s quiet, retiring character, as well as her physical delicacy. It is surprising that both this bust and that of Thomas Molyneux-Seel should be so prominently documented with the place and year of their production, but with no mention of the sculptor, of whom there were many working in Rome in the 1820s, but perhaps the inscription was intended above all to serve as a personal reminder of the couple's months in the Eternal City. Thomas Molyneux-Seel also commissioned painted portraits of himself and Agnes, from the neo-classical painter Ferdinando Cavalleri (1794-1867), the portrait of Agnes depicting her holding a pair of doves, referring to Venus, Goddess of Love (NT 1210343 and 1210896). Jeremy Warren February 2025