Summary

Sculpture, plaster; Portrait bust of Louisa Theodosia Jenkinson, Lady Hawkesbury, later Countess of Liverpool (1767-1821); Joseph Nollekens (1737-1823); 1801. Louisa Theodosia Hervey, the third daughter of Frederick, 4th Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry, the Earl Bishop (1730-1803), married in 1795 Robert Banks Jenkinson (1770-1828), later the 2nd Earl of Liverpool. He would go on to become one of Britain’s longest-serving and most effective Prime Ministers, whilst Louisa devoted much of her life to assisting the poor. The sculptor Joseph Nollekens (1737-1823) exhibited his portrait of the then Lady Hawkesbury at the Royal Academy summer exhibition in 1801. It is one of the sculptor's earliest portraits of women in a fully neo-classical style. with Lady Hawkesbury wearing a loose dress in the antique style and a ribbon in her hair. Whilst two marble versions are known, this version of the portrait at Ickworth, which is of outstanding quality, appears to be the only plaster example, so there must be a reasonable chance that it is Nollekens’ original model.

Full description

A plaster portrait bust of Louisa Theodosia Jenkinson (née Hervey), Lady Hawkesbury (1767-1821), by Joseph Nollekens. The sitter is depicted facing forward and dressed in a loose gown, fastened with buttons at the left shoulder, whilst another drape passes over her right shoulder and across her front. Lady Hawkesbury’s hair is tied up into a bunch at the back of her head and held in place with a broad ribbon that runs round her head. Louisa Theodosia Hervey was the third daughter and fourth child of Frederick Hervey, 4th Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry (1730-1803), known as the Earl-Bishop, and Elizabeth Davers, Countess of Bristol (1730-1800). At the age of ten Louisa travelled with her parents to Germany and Italy, where she enjoyed tuition in music and drawing, as well as learning to mingle with her parents’ aristocratic and artistic acquaintances. In the summer of 1778 the family settled for the summer in Castel Gandolfo near Rome, but all succumbed to malaria, Louisa very nearly dying from the disease. She travelled with her parents to Naples to complete her recovery. In 1779 Louisa’s father succeeded as the 4th Earl of Bristol, so thereafter she and her mother lived at Ickworth, not at the present house which had not been built but in a converted farmhouse, Ickworth Lodge. In 1782 her parents separated, Lady Bristol devoting herself to her daughter’s welfare, noting in a letter of 7 February 1783 that ‘I now am only intent on drawing all the good possible out of this evil in favor of Louisa .. and to acquire in solid advantages to her mind and character what she loses in accomplishments, which are more easily taken up at any time, and of infinitely less consequence.’ (Childe-Pemberton 1925, I, p. 291). Already in this letter her mother explained that the sixteen-year old Louisa ‘is at present very busy in clothing a girl that she is to put to school’, a foretaste of Louisa's strong commitment throughout her life to helping poorer people. One of the consequences of the break-up her parents’ marriage was the necessity on Lady Bristol’s part to let the family’s London house, which meant that Louisa and her mother remained confined to Ickworth Lodge and her debut in London society was delayed. In 1785 the dreariness of her life at Ickworth and the control exercised over her by her mother (who would, from those few novels that Louisa was permitted to read, tear out any pages she considered unsuitable) became such that she suffered a nervous breakdown. Fortunately the doctor who saw Louisa was wise enough to prescribe a move to London, exercise and ‘cheerful amusements’, leading to her partial recovery, although she continued to suffer from some nervous depression over the next few years. However, by early 1794 Louisa Hervey had met Robert Banks Jenkinson (1770-1828), a budding M.P. and the son of Charles Jenkinson, first baron Hawkesbury (1729-1808). In 1796 Robert became Lord Hawkesbury on his father’s promotion in the peerage to the earldom of Liverpool, whilst in 1808 he would succeed his father as 2nd Earl of Liverpool. Their strong and lasting love for one another was reinforced by their similar temperaments, both Louisa and Robert being serious people with strong senses of social responsibility. Both were somewhat shy, but kind and well-intentioned. Their marriage came in the teeth of the strong opposition of Jenkinson’s father, who believed his son should not marry when so young and early in his career, certainly not to a woman who was not an heiress. It took the efforts of a number of people, notably Jenkinson’s close friend George Canning but even King George III and the Prime Minister William Pitt, to persuade Lord Hawkesbury to grant his consent, allowing the couple finally to marry on 25th March 1795, in Wimbledon. Although they would not have children, the new couple would enjoy an exceptionally close marriage in which they were rarely apart, Lady Liverpool acting as a patient and competent political hostess and a close and discreet confidante to her husband. At a time when there was a growing public reaction against the perceived corruption and immorality of politicians, Lord Liverpool seems to have been the only senior politician against whom no accusation was ever brought. Throughout her life Lady Liverpool’s evangelical beliefs reinforced her strong commitment to helping the poor, often it was said entirely anonymously. She was also censorious of her own class, commenting in 1803 on the Duchess of Richmond’s worldliness that ‘alas, how far from her is that amiable Christian Humility which we are told is so important to us!’. In 1810 she wrote to her sister, Lady Erne, to thank her for a gift she had made to help a former merchant now in distress, adding ‘Oh my Dear Sister, what a number there are who I can not assist! Who are sick and destitute and suffering, whilst I am surrounded by comforts far beyond my deserts.’ (Grosvenor and Stuart 1927, I, p. 171). But she was certainly at times sanctimonious, writing in 1809 about two aristocratic families known to her, each of which had lost a son in the wrecking of a troop transport off the Cornwall coast, that ‘They are just the sort of prosperous people that will suffer peculiarly from such a blow, but it may be wholesome discipline.’ (Gage 1984, p. 104). Lady Liverpool began to fall ill in 1816, with her bouts of illness increasing over the succeeding years. She died on 12 June 1821 at Fife House in Whitehall, London. Her husband was shattered by her death, unable for several days to carry out his prime ministerial duties and blinded by tears throughout his wife’s funeral which took place on 22 June 1821 in the parish church of Hawkesbury. After her death Lord Liverpool commissioned the sculptor Francis Chantrey to make a statue of Louisa, in which she was portrayed as a young woman. Although the statue was intended for a monument, Liverpool could not bear to let it out of his sight, so it remained in his home, Coombe House in Richmond Park. Today it is in All Saints Church Kingston-upon-Thames, where he and Louisa had regularly worshipped. The inscription on the statue’s pedestal, no doubt devised by Lord Liverpool, made full reference to his wife’s charitable virtues in its adaptation from the definition of pure religion in the General Epistle of James I, 27: ‘She visited the fatherless/ and widows in their affliction/ and kept herself/ unspotted from the world.’ There are in fact very few portraits of Lady Liverpool, the most important George Romney’s full-length painting from 1790-93 at Ickworth (NT 851766) and the present portrait. This shows Louisa Jenkinson at the age of around 33 or 34 and must have been commissioned by her husband from the sculptor Joseph Nollekens. Although the sculpture was identified as a portrait of Louisa Jenkinson and as the work of Joseph Nollekens by John Kenworthy-Browne as long ago as 1975, it has until now been wrongly attributed to a younger sculptor, Sir Francis Chantrey (1781-1841). Nollekens was born into a family of artists from Antwerp that had settled in London. As a young man, he was apprenticed to Peter Scheemakers (1691-1781) before he travelled to Rome, where he lived for some ten years from 1760. On his return to Britain, Nollekens became one of the most successful sculptors of the day, making many monuments, but also large numbers of portraits, including the defining images of public figures of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries such as William Pitt or Charles James Fox. The finest portrait sculptor working in Britain in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Nollekens had a remarkable ability to create lively likenesses, in which the characters of the sitters are strongly expressed. Nollekens exhibited a version of his bust of Louisa Jenkinson, presumably in marble, at the Royal Academy summer exhibition in 1801, as ‘A bust of Lady Hawkesbury’ (RA 1801, p. 36, no. 1007). Showing the sitter in ‘Greek’ style, wearing a loose dress and with a ribbon holding her hair, this sensitive and beautiful likeness is one of the first of Nollekens’ fully neo-Classical female portraits. What was presumably the marble version shown in 1801 remained with the descendants of Lord Liverpool until its sale in 1993, when it was acquired by National Museum Wales (NMW A 2559). A second version in marble, signed ‘Nollekens fc’, was at another Jenkinson house, Pitchford Hall in Shropshire, until the sale of the house and its contents in 1992 (Christie’s, Pitchford Hall, 28-19 September 1992, lot 47, unsold). The very beautiful version of the portrait at Ickworth is the only known one in plaster. It is possible that it is Nollekens’s original plaster which he would have used as his model when making his marble versions. The sculptor’s posthumous sale, held by Christie’s between 3-5 July 1823, included an example in plaster of the bust in a lot (first day, lot 39) that also included plaster busts of Lord Liverpool and Lord Castlereagh. Nollekens’ powerful portrait of Lord Liverpool exhibited in 1816, of which there are three versions at Ickworth (NT 852211, 852224, 852224.2), is said to have been the last portrait sculpture made by the artist. Whereas the Nollekens sale included multiple versions in plaster of some of his most successful models such as that of William Pitt, the plaster bust of Lady Liverpool in lot 39 was the only version to be sold in 1823. Lot 39 was bought, like many other lots in the sale, by the late sculptor’s friend Mrs Palmer, later Mrs Russell. Whereas the marbles and terracottas she had bought in 1823 reappeared after her death in a sale held by Christie’s in March 1847, this sale did not include any of Nollekens’s plasters. So, whilst in the current state of knowledge this can only be supposition, it is entirely possible that the 1st Marquess of Bristol could have acquired from Mrs Palmer this very fine and moving portrait of his late sister. Jeremy Warren October 2025