Summary

Sculpture, plaster; Portrait of a lady of the Hervey family, probably Elizabeth Albana Upton (1775-1844), Countess Jermyn, later Countess and then 1st Marchioness of Bristol; attributed to Elizabeth Upton, Lady Templetown (1747-1823); London or Ickworth, c. 1798-1800. The sitter in this bust must be a member of the Hervey family. She is most likely to be Elizabeth Albana Upton, who in 1798 married Frederick William Hervey (1769-1859), later 5th Earl and 1st Marquess of Bristol. The sculpture also seems to be a hitherto unrecognized work by Elizabeth’s mother Elizabeth Upton, Lady Templetown, a talented amateur artist, who is best-known today for supplying designs to the potter Josiah Wedgwood, but was also a competent sculptor. There are several works by her at Ickworth, including a portrait of Lady Bristol’s husband, for which this portrait may have been conceived as a pair, made shortly after their marriage in 1798. Lady Templetown also made sculpted portrait busts of the couple’s two eldest children when infants.

Full description

A portrait bust in plaster of a young woman, looking to her left, wearing a dress fastened at the shoulders with circular rings. Her hair is parted at the middle with two shocks of hair rising up at the front on either side of the parting, whilst at the back the hair is tied into a chignon bun at the back of the head, with a ribbon holding all in place. The bust is not hollow at the back, but is instead worked in the round. Mounted on a circular waisted socle. This portrait bust has hitherto been considered to be a portrait of Louisa Theodosia Jenkinson, Lady Hawkesbury, later Countess of Liverpool (1767-1821), the third daughter of Frederick Hervey, 4th Earl of Bristol (1730-1803), and it has been attributed to Francis Chantrey (1781-1841). However, comparison with Joseph Nollekens’ bust of Lady Hawkesbury of 1801 at Ickworth (NT 852230) shows that this is not the same individual. Nor is there any resemblance between the portrait and Chantrey’s memorial figure of Lady Liverpool, commissioned by her husband after her death and today in All Saints Church, Kingston-upon-Thames (Dunkerley 1995, p. 61, Pl. 18). Pretty well all the portrait sculptures at Ickworth have some family connection, being members of the Hervey family or individuals who had family or political connections, the latter including for example William Pitt and Charles James Fox. The subject of this portrait therefore has to be a female member of the family. The neo-classical dress may be compared with that worn by Lady Hawkesbury in her 1801 portrait and so would date this bust probably to around 1800. The highly unusual hairstyle, with large shocks of hair rising at the front, is highly unusual and does not seem to be following a particular fashion either from the period around 1800, or a little later into the nineteenth century. There are closer analogies though with fashions around 1800 (Corson 1965, pp. 394-395, Pl. 87D, ‘English, c. 1794; de Courtais 1973, pp. 96-97, figs. 199 and 201, 1802 and 1806). The woman is young, which would exclude the 4th Earl’s eldest daughters Mary, Lady Erne (1753-1842) and Elizabeth Hervey (1759-1824), later Mrs Foster and subsequently Duchess of Devonshire. There are many portraits of Elizabeth and this is clearly not that person, who wore her hair very differently. This leaves just two candidates: Elizabeth Catherine Caroline Hervey (1780-1803), granddaughter of the 4th Earl, who married Charles Rose Ellis, later Lord Seaford (1771-1845) in 1798, and who died young of consumption five years later; or, Elizabeth Albana Upton (1775-1844), who also married in 1798, to Frederick William Hervey (1769-1859), then Earl Jermyn but subsequently 5th Earl and 1st Marquess of Bristol. Of the two, there is one known image of Elizabeth Catherine Ellis as a young woman, a miniature by Alexander Galloway (fl. 1794-1812) in a private collection. This does show the sitter with her hair parted at centre and pushed up into a bun at the top of her head, although in a more controlled manner than in the portrait bust. The face is rather generalized in the miniature. So far as Elizabeth Albana Hervey is concerned, there exist surprisingly few portraits of her, although the two at Ickworth are both very fine ones, a portrait bust by Lorenzo Bartolini (1777-1850), made in Florence in 1818-19 when the sitter was in her mid-forties (NT 852210), and Sir Frances Grant’s moving portrait, painted just before the sitter’s death (NT 851725). A portrait miniature formerly in the Bristol collection and now at Kenwood (English heritage) is thought also to depict Elizabeth Albana Hervey (Inv. 88421346). The bust seems very likely to be the work of Elizabeth Upton, Lady Templetown (1747-1823), who was Lady Bristol’s mother and who sculpted during the same period, c. 1798-1804, a group of portrait busts of members of the Hervey family. Elizabeth Upton was one of a small group of well-born women living in the second half of the eighteenth century, who were able to varying degrees to make use of their considerable artistic talents, by pursuing careers as amateur artists. Others included Diana, Lady Beauclerk (1734-1808) and the Honourable Anne Seymour Damer (1748–1828). Like Diana Beauclerk, Elizabeth Upton is best known today for the designs she made from 1783 for Josiah Wedgwood and delivered in the form of cut-outs, which were then modelled up in the factory and reproduced on Wedgwood wares (Hughes 1952). Born Elizabeth Boughton into a gentry family in Herefordshire, in 1769 she married Clotworthy Upton (1721-85), a courtier who in 1776 was created Baron Templetown of Templetown, Co. Antrim. They had six children, the boys John Henry Upton (1771-1846), later 1st Viscount Templetown, and two other sons Fulke-Greville (1773-1846) and Arthur-Percy (1777-1855). There were three daughters, Elizabeth Albana (1775-1844), Caroline (1778-1862) and Sophia (1780-1853). In addition Lord Templetown had an illegitimate daughter, also called Sophia, who seems at least to an extent to have been included within the family. Caroline married James Singleton in 1804, whilst Sophia died unmarried and seems to have been a companion to her mother during her lifetime. Some of Lord Templetown’s wealth was derived from slavery; he owned estates and enslaved people on Grenada which, on his death in 1785, he bequeathed in trust for his wife for life. However his wife does not seem to have been very well-off. When in the mid-1790s her future father-in-law the 4th Earl of Bristol, the Earl-Bishop, was trying in vain to persuade his son to marry the Countess of Lichtenau’s daughter instead of Elizabeth Albana Upton, he repeatedly described the latter as having no fortune or settlement (Fothergill 1974, pp. 194-96). The only sculptures by Elizabeth Upton currently identified are the significant group of portraits at Ickworth. However, sculpting seems to have been an important artistic activity for her from early in her life. In 1772 she and her husband set off on a Continental tour, General the Hon. William Hervey (1732-1815), younger brother of the 2nd-4th Earls of Bristol, recording meeting Clotworthy and Elizabeth Upton at the Balances Inn in Geneva in May 1772 (Hervey 1906, p. 234) and again in Geneva on 18 September 1773 (ibid., p. 240). By 1773 she and her husband were in Italy, where they remained until 1775. The sculptor Richard Hayward recorded the couple as being in Rome in 1774, Hayward noting that ‘Mrs Upton models in Clay and wax’ (Stainton 1983, p. 15). The Uptons must have come to know Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-78), who dedicated a plate in his 'Vasi, candelabri, cippi, sarcofagi, tripodi, lucerne ed ornamenti antichi', writing fulsomely ‘To Mrs Eliza Upton, English Lady and most learned in every conceivable field of the liberal arts’: (‘Alla Signora Eliza Upton Dama Inglese Intendentissima in ogni sorta di Arti LIberali’). Accompanied by her three daughters, Lady Templetown returned to Italy as a widow late in 1792, spending the next three years in the country (Ingamells 1997, pp. 932-33). She was in Rome in December 1792, where she was said to have much admired works by John Flaxman, and by March 1793 was in Naples, where she would stay for two years, an active member of the resident British community. In early May 1795 the family left for Venice and by June were in Vienna, where they were joined by Lady Templetown’s eldest son John. It is not known whether Frederick Hervey first met Elizabeth Albana Upton on the Continent or at home in Britain. Lady Templetown must have been back in Britain by the later 1790s, since in 1798 the composer William Carnaby (1772-1839) dedicated to her a set of six songs. On 20 August of that year General Hervey recorded that he ‘Went to Lady Templetown’s at the great house in Leatherhead’, explaining that ‘the two Lady Templetowns keep house together’, that is Elizabeth Upton, Dowager Lady Templetown, and her daughter-in-law Mary. With them in the house was ‘Miss Sophy Upton, natural daughter of the late Lord T.’ (Hervey 1906, pp. 423-24). Between c. 1798 and c.1804 Lady Templetown made the significant group of portrait busts now at Ickworth, consisting of: her son-in-law Frederick William, then Earl Jermyn, later the 5th Earl and1ist Marquess of Bristol, versions in marble and plaster (NT 852209 and NT 852237); her two eldest grandchildren as infants, Lady Augusta Hervey, in plaster (NT 852216), and Frederick William Hervey, later 2nd Marquess of Bristol, in marble and plaster (NT 852217.1-2); Charles Ellis (1771-1845), later 1st Baron Seaford of Seaford, MP and the husband of Lady Elizabeth Catherine Hervey (1780-1803), in plaster (NT 852241). These busts vary quite widely as models, some hollow at the back, some open, whilst the male busts have tablets between the bust and socle, whereas that of Lady Augusta Hervey lacks this feature, which was perhaps thought more suitable for portraits of men. But there are features that are common to them, and that help to reinforce the attribution of this portrait bust to Elizabeth Upton, Lady Templetown. The forms of the socles are identical across all the busts, whilst Lady Templetown seems to have employed a distinct manner of truncating the arms, which is very well seen in the present portrait bust as well as in the small bust of Lady Augusta Hervey. Beyond this, all the sculptures by her share a slight flatness and generalizing quality in their modelling, that perhaps suggests an amateur and occasional artist, rather than a professional such as Nollekens or Chantrey. The portrait bust seems very likely to be another of her works. To return finally to the question, who was the sitter? It is impossible to give a definitive answer but, on balance, it would seem more likely to be Elizabeth Albana Hervey. In the first instance it might be more expected that Lady Templetown would have portrayed her own daughter at some stage. Although there are twenty years between the plaster portrait bust and Bartolini’s marble bust, and more than forty years until the Grant portrait, a certain resemblance may arguably be discerned, in the wide slightly unfocussed eyes, the high arches above the eyes and the strongly parted hair. If the plaster portrait is also her, then Elizabeth Albana Hervey Lady Bristol must have kept all her life a broadly similar hair arrangement. Both Elizabeth Albana Hervey and Elizabeth Catherine Hervey were married in 1798. It would seem entirely feasible that the portrait was conceived as a companion to one of the new husbands, Frederick William, Earl Jermyn, or Charles Ellis, sculpted portraits of both of whom are at Ickworth. In the bust of Charles Ellis (NT 852241), the eyes are incised to show the iris and pupil, not left blank as in the present bust, whereas in both the marble and plaster versions of the bust of Earl Jermyn, his eyes are blank. There must therefore be a good possibility that this portrait bust by Lady Templetown, most likely to depict Elizabeth Albana, was made as a pair to the plaster version of her portrait of her new son-in-law Earl Jermyn (NT 852237). Jeremy Warren January 2026