All Lined Up

This charming silhouette is the only known work executed by Miss Charlotte Addington of Richmond Park. Cut from a single piece of glossy paper, it shows a line of ladies with playful children. The well-balanced silhouette is laid on silk and housed in a period Hogarth frame. The frame is glazed on the reverse to show the artist’s signature on a separate folded sheet of paper. The silhouette is fine condition as is the frame though the glass on the reverse is secured with sellotape.

Born in 1801, Charlotte was the sixth child of Henry Addington, 1st Viscount Sidmouth and his wife Ursula Mary Hammond. Her grandfather was physician to William Pitt the Elder and so her father became a lifelong friend of William Pitt the Younger. Addington served as British Prime Minister between 1801 and 1804 and then as Home Secretary.

Whilst Prime Minister, King George III gifted Addington the use of White Lodge in Richmond Park and this is where Charlotte and her siblings grew up and where Charlotte cut this silhouette. The silhouette is undated but is estimated to have been cut around 1815-1820.

Charlotte was 37 years old when she married the Rev. Horace Gore Currie in May 1838. The couple continued to live at White Lodge until Henry Addington’s death in 1844 whereupon they moved to Sevenoaks where Charlotte died in 1870. They had no children. White Lodge subsequently became home to various members of the Royal Family until in 1855 Sadler’s Wells was granted permanent use of the building to house the Royal Ballet School.