John Downman, A.R.A. (Ruabon, Wales 1750-1824 Wrexham)
John Downman, A.R.A. (Ruabon, Wales 1750-1824 Wrexham)

Portrait of Mrs. Arabella Graham-Clarke (1755-1827), half-length, seated, wearing a high-necked white dress and lace-trimmed mob cap, a landscape with windmills beyond

Details
John Downman, A.R.A. (Ruabon, Wales 1750-1824 Wrexham)
Portrait of Mrs. Arabella Graham-Clarke (1755-1827), half-length, seated, wearing a high-necked white dress and lace-trimmed mob cap, a landscape with windmills beyond
pencil, stump and watercolour
11 ¾ x 9 3/8 in. (29.9 x 23.8 cm.)
Provenance
The sitter, and by descent; Christie's, London, 19 March 1928, lot 6 (unsold).
Literature
G.C. Williamson, John Downman, A.R.A., his Life and Works, London, 1907, p. lv, no. 17.

Lot Essay

The sitter in this drawing has previously been identified as Miss Arabella Parkinson of Kinnersley Castle, Herefordshire. However, this is a conflation of Arabella Altham, wife of John Graham-Clarke, and her daughter-in-law, Mary Elizabeth Parkinson of Kinnersley Castle. The costume suggests a date of c. 1805, and as such it seems likely that the sitter is Arabella, rather than Mary Elizabeth, who was born in 1786. Arabella was the maternal grandmother of the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861).

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