Finding Mary’s Work: Art and Archive Detection
- Debbie Challis
- Apr 12
- 4 min read
With thanks to Peter Bradford
It is so exciting when we are able to match names and a history to otherwise unknown portraits from the past, even when they are not well known. Perhaps, especially, when they are not well known. And even more exciting when that artist is Mary Severn (Newton), a female artist, most of whose professional work was for commission. As I have written before, this means much of her surviving work is in private hands. This does mean that occasional pieces turn up at auction.
My fellow Mary fan and co-conspirator Peter bought another two portraits by her that came up for auction a few weeks ago. There was no name on them, unlike that of the Marriott women, just Mary’s name and the date 1857. The pictures were auctioned near Bath and Mary spent August 1857 there with some of her mother’s family, the Montgomeries. Mary’s mother Elizabeth (sometimes Eliza) Severn née Montgomerie had - unusually - an unknown mother but her father was Major General Archibald Montgomerie (1773 - 1814), also known as Lord Montgomerie. Mary’s mother was illegitimate with only rumours about who her mother was. She was the half sister of the thirteenth Earl of Eglington - another Archibald (1812-1861) - who was Viceroy of Ireland when Mary visited Dublin in 1852. The family tree is complicated, not least as many of them have the same first name.
This wealthier aristocratic family supported their more bohemian ‘natural’ family with stays at Eglington Castle, introductions and commissions. The castle was the site of the notorious 1839 medieval tournament.* In 1857 the family resources had dwindled but they were still rich and well connected in comparison to the Severns. Mary was staying with her half cousin Egidia Montgomerie (1844-1880) and great aunt Lady Jane Hamilton (1775-1861) in August 1857. She usually went away, either on holiday ot to stay with relatives or wealthy connections in the summer as Society vacated London and there was little chance of work. Accompanied by her younger brother Arthur, who was a year or two older than Egidia, Mary was playing the part of part family member, part art-teacher and a portrait artist working on commission.
I looked back at the letters Mary wrote to her mother from 24 Grand Crescent Bath and, sure enough, on 9 August Mary records arriving at the station at Bath and setting to work on making portraits. A later letter dated Wednesday August 1857, records more detail about two of the portraits made and these details match the portraits Peter has bought. I sent the photos of the letters to him and he transcribed them. Here they are . . .
The Letters
Lady Jane Hamilton (actually Lady Jame Montgomerie but known by her mother’s maiden name):
My dearest Mama,
The day is so taken up with one thing & another & the evening with cards that l've never had time to write to you or to other people I wanted to write to.
First I must tell you that dear Lady Jane’s picture is thought very like, and I expect Mrs Broke (variant of Brook) today to come and see it.
I've done her in the same attitude as Lady Elgin, doing her worsted [embroidery] work on a frame.
She has on a moire [watery finish] antique dress of grey & black mantilla (head dress). Mrs Broke had all the capes tried on & fixed on the one herself.
Egidia says she won't have a copy of it but must have the original. So I don't know how that will be settled. Certainly I'd much rather do another than a copy, especially as I think I might do a better one for you know I am never satisfied.
Lady Jane is so small and meschino [Italian probably meaning frail] that the drawing to be like cannot & has not the power & strength of Lady Elgin's but perhaps I ought to be all the more pleased to think that I've got the 2 different characters.
Lady E's was a 'mathematical' head with power like a man's & Lady J is all softness & gentleness but still I don't know why but I feel as if my drawing looks tame. How stupid I am to say all this when I may be prejudicing you against it.
I am also drawing Egidia with her 2 white cats and I am quite delighted with the attitude which I saw in nature & Lady J is so pleased with it tho I have only 2 sittings and Egidia moves so much that I feel inclined sometimes to throw myself out of the window! It quite irritated me yesterday but still she is a good child and really tries when she sees I am put out.
Lady Jane will pay me what you paid for the prints.
Egidia has a real talent for drawing. How clever she is!! How accomplished she will be.
Egidia (Montgomerie) Thellusson: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Montgomerie-210
It is so pleasing to name these women that Mary painted. They are also part of her extended family and throw light on her working practice. She stayed at Bath, with her younger brother, as half family / half employee that was crucial to her paid work as an artist.
*Postscript: The Eglington Tournament August 1839
Archibald Montgomerie, the 13th Earl of Eglington, is best known for putting on a mock medieval tournament for 2,690 upperclass guests as a riposte to the step by step democratic reforms of the Whigs and radicals at a cost of (in todays money) £3.5 million. The event was notorious as a muddy washout. It was linked to a heightened interest in gothic but owed less to antiquarian evidence about the medieval period than to the novels of Walter Scott and a conservative belief in social hierarchy and land control.
The event cost the Eglington family much of their fortune, which was still considerable. A fortune that was derived in part from plantation enslavement - Lady Jane’s mother Eleanora Hamilton was born and christened on Kingston Jamaica. Compensation for property - that is the people owned by these families as slaves - went to the extended family of Montgomeries, Hamiltons, Fergussons and Blairs in 1836.
Rosemary Hill (2023), Time’s Witness. History in the Age of Romanticism
Alex Renton (2021), Blood legacy. Reckoning with a Family’s Story of Slavery
Legacies of British Slave Ownership UCL, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/
