Lot Essay
The monogram is that of Angela, Baroness Burdett-Coutts.
Angela Georgina Burdett-Coutts (1814-1906) was the youngest step-granddaughter of the Duchess of St. Albans, who, following an early career on the stage, married her admirer Thomas Coutts, the banker, in 1815. On his death in 1822 he left her a fortune of 600,000. She married secondly in 1827, William, 9th Duke of St. Albans. On her death the Duchess left her fortune to Angela Burdett who assumed the additional surname of Coutts by Royal Licence and added the Coutts arms to her own.
She used the fortune to amass a large art collection, to entertain on a lavish scale and to fund numerous philanthropic schemes for which she was awarded a peerage by Queen Victoria in 1871. She resisted numerous suitors until her marriage in 1881 to William Bartlett who then took the name Burdett-Coutts before that of Bartlett and was granted the arms of Burdett and Coutts to be quartered with his own.
The Baroness had known Bartlett from an early age but was thirty-nine years his senior when they married in 1881. He became M.P. for Westminster from 1885 and gave considerable assistance to his wife in her philanthropic activities. Baroness Burdett-Coutts died on December 30, 1906 and her body lay in state for two days, during which nearly 30,000 people, both rich and poor paid her their last respects. She was buried in Westminster Abbey on January 5, 1907.
An identical pair of decanters by the same, 1878, was sold by Sotheby's, London, April 30, 1987, lot 286.
Angela Georgina Burdett-Coutts (1814-1906) was the youngest step-granddaughter of the Duchess of St. Albans, who, following an early career on the stage, married her admirer Thomas Coutts, the banker, in 1815. On his death in 1822 he left her a fortune of 600,000. She married secondly in 1827, William, 9th Duke of St. Albans. On her death the Duchess left her fortune to Angela Burdett who assumed the additional surname of Coutts by Royal Licence and added the Coutts arms to her own.
She used the fortune to amass a large art collection, to entertain on a lavish scale and to fund numerous philanthropic schemes for which she was awarded a peerage by Queen Victoria in 1871. She resisted numerous suitors until her marriage in 1881 to William Bartlett who then took the name Burdett-Coutts before that of Bartlett and was granted the arms of Burdett and Coutts to be quartered with his own.
The Baroness had known Bartlett from an early age but was thirty-nine years his senior when they married in 1881. He became M.P. for Westminster from 1885 and gave considerable assistance to his wife in her philanthropic activities. Baroness Burdett-Coutts died on December 30, 1906 and her body lay in state for two days, during which nearly 30,000 people, both rich and poor paid her their last respects. She was buried in Westminster Abbey on January 5, 1907.
An identical pair of decanters by the same, 1878, was sold by Sotheby's, London, April 30, 1987, lot 286.