Mrs Crook of Bushey Grove

This very fine example of Mrs Beetham’s work shows a seated lady named Mrs Crook wearing a dress with a laced bodice and a puffed-out buffon. Her hair is curled on top and arranged in the distinctive ‘three ringlets’ style, a short-lived fashion that dates the profile to the 1780s.

Reverse painted on convex glass and backed with plaster within a verre églomisé border, the silhouette is housed in the original turned pearwood frame with the artist’s trade label no. 5 on the reverse. The verre églomisé border was likely painted by her husband, Edward, as he had travelled to Murano around this time to study glass painting. Both silhouette and frame are in excellent condition.

Isabella Beetham began cutting silhouettes out of necessity to support her young family and was fortunate to be taught painting during the early 1780s by John Smart, the acclaimed miniaturist. Her husband meantime was a dabbler: he tried acting on stage, he designed a theatre safety curtain, he took in lodgers, he built and sold new-fangled washing machines, he offered insurance cover and so on.