Amelia Egerton, Lady Hume (1751-1809)

Sir Joshua Reynolds PRA (Plympton 1723 - London 1792). Oil painting on canvas, Amelia Egerton, Lady Hume (1751-1809) by Sir Joshua Reynolds PRA (Plympton 1723 - London 1792). 1785. Half-length portrait of a mature woman, seated, turned to the left, gazing at the spectator, powdered, curled hair with ringlets falling on her shoulders, wearing a green dress, white bodice tied with a red and white bow and with a King Charles spaniel on her lap. Scarlet plush drape behind. Oil on canvas laid on panel [if so, transferred from panel and reattached, since Hume called it ‘one of the very few pictures which Sir Joshua painted on Pannel, which his kindness consented to do at Sir A. Hume’s request. The colours retain their original brilliancy...’ ( [Sir Abraham Hume], A Descriptive Catalogue of a Collection of Pictures, 1824, p.41, no.138) Lady Amelia Egerton was born in 1751, the daughter of Rt. Rev. John Egerton Bishop of Durham (1721-1787) and Lady Anne Sophia Grey (d.1780) daughter of Henry de Grey, Duke of Kent. She was the sister and heiress of the unmarried General John William Egerton, 7th Earl of Bridgwater (1753-1823). She married Sir Abraham Hume, 2nd Bt., son of Sir Abraham Hume, 1st Bt., in 1771. Children of Lady Amelia Egerton and Sir Abraham Hume, 2nd Bt. (1748/9-1838) 1.Amelia Hume (1772-1837) who in 1793 married Charles Long, later created Baron Farnborough, who died without issue 2.Amelia Sophia Hume, Lady Brownlow (1788-1814) who married John Cust, 2nd Baron Brownlow, later (1815) created 1st Earl Brownlow and Viscount Alford, whose son, John Hume (Egerton) (1812-1851), Viscount Alford, inherited the vast Egerton estates which brought him an income of £70,000 a year. She died in 1809. When exhibited at the Royal Academy, the Morning Herald wrote: ‘no 23, Portrait of a lady, is a good likeness of Lady Hume, but, for her fine figure, she should have sat for a full length.’ A payment of 50 guineas by ‘Sir Abraham Hume, for Lady Hume’, is recorded in his ledger on 1 December 1785. Lady Hume almost certainly sat for this picture in 1785, a year for which Reynolds’s pocket-book has not survived. Belton House, Lincolnshire (Accredited Museum)