The fortune teller: four children of Andrew Grote, Frances (1760-1833), George (1762-1830), Charlotte (1763-1787), and Caroline (1773-1817)

The pose, costumes and colours of this drawing of four of the children of Andrew Grote directly reference Sir Joshua Reynolds’s 1777 A Fortune-Teller, now at Waddesdon Manor. It was during the 1770s that Gardner is reputed to have worked in Reynolds’s studio. It is not clear whether the ‘fortune-teller’ concept was requested by Grote after Reynolds’s painting, or suggested by Gardner following the success of Reynolds’s Royal Academy exhibit. Dating the pastel to post 1777, it is possible to identify the sitters in the fortune-telling group as Frances (1760-1833), George (1762-1830) and Charlotte (1763-1787), with Caroline (1773-1817) as the small child to the left.
We are grateful to Neil Jeffares for his help in preparing this catalogue entry, and for including the drawing in the next update to his Dictionary of pastellists..