Lot Essay
Jane Roberts (d. 1752), daughter and co-heir of Sir Walter Roberts, 6th Bt., of Glassenbury, Kent, married George Beauclerk, 3rd Duke of St. Albans (1730-1786) in 1752. Her husband, whose grandfather, Charles Beauclerk, 1st Duke of St. Albans, K.G., was the illegitimate son of King Charles II and Nell Gwynne, was Lord Lieutenant of Berkshire. Nathaniel Hone, who was born in Dublin, was the foremost Irish portrait painter of his generation but worked mostly in England, where he initially specialised in painting miniatures but gave this up completely in the 1760s to concentrate on portraiture and was a founder member of the Royal Academy.