| Description | Manuscript letter from Mary Linwood to the engraver William Ridley, addressed to ‘Mr Ridley, Engraver, Church Street, Cheshunt, Herts.’ [London], undated [but likely Monday 6 January 1800]. A significant letter showing how important it was to Mary Linwood that the dissemination of her image should be under her control.
In 1799 William Beechey produced a miniature portrait of Linwood, which she praised highly and survives only through William Ridley’s stipple engraving published in The Monthly Mirror in January 1800. Likely arising from shared court connections between Mary and Beechey, the portrait emphasises Linwood’s pedagogical identity: she is modestly dressed, seated at a desk, and presented as virtuous, learned, and financially secure, with no reference to the commercial success of her Hanover Square gallery. This image was clearly meant to appeal to the magazine’s readership and wealthy connoisseurs whilst distancing her from overt commercialism.
Linwood carefully controlled the portrait’s reproduction and circulation. In correspondence with Thomas Hill, part owner of The Monthly Mirror, she insisted that any print appear only with the magazine, reflecting anxiety
about reputation and dissemination. Her unusually emphatic underlining underscores this concern. She also sought revisions to Ridley’s engraving, demonstrating close oversight of her public image. Although until this letter appeared the exact changes were unknown, Linwood’s interventions reveal a deliberate and sustained effort to manage how she was represented in print.
Linwood’s letter to George Ridley is, in essence, an appeal to have her portrait returned for a short while. She begins her letter ‘Sir, I write from the Poultry where I am come, for the chance of finding you but understand you are not in London.’ We suspect that Mary had gone to 31 Poultry, the premises of Vernor & Hood, who published a number of plates for the Monthly Mirror and presumably where Ridley worked on some, at least, of his stipple-engraved portraits. Later in the letter Mary writes ‘I beg by the very first conveyance you will send me Sr Wm’s Picture, I want it for a particular purpose for my own use - for a few hours only - but must have it - and that by tomorrow if I can…’. It is clear that the stipple-engraved plate had not yet been finished, and Mary goes on to slightly chastise Ridley ‘if you had not taken it a second time from London without my knowledge...’. Mary asks Ridley to have the portrait addressed to her at ‘Hanover Square, as before… tell the person who packs it to be careful - I see it already injured by the Nails.’
At this point Mary signs off the letter but adds an important postscript: ‘the sketch comes this day - I leave it to you to make the best you can of both, & lament you’ve not better - if you do not approve this, - copy Sr Wm by altering the hair, - & any thing also to your taste.’ This is important, for it is clear that George Ridley was working from two portraits, the first being the one by Sir William Beechey and the second, without doubt, that now held at Leicester Museum that is inscribed ‘Miss Linwood. Given by her to Mr Ridley and by Ridley to Rivers.’ This sketch was then engraved by Rivers and published by the aforementioned Vernor and Hood in July 1800, and published in that month’s Lady’s Monthly Museum.
The whereabouts of Sir William Beechey’s portrait of Linwood is today unknown, however it would appear that it must look somewhat different from the stipple engraving, more particularly through ‘altering the hair’
and whatever else Mary Linwood meant by ‘any thing also to your taste.’ |
| Administrative History | Mary Linwood, 1755–1845, was a celebrated British needlework artist, born in Birmingham and later raised in Leicester after her father’s bankruptcy. Her mother, Hannah Linwood, ran a boarding school where Mary developed her artistic skills. By 1776 both mother and daughter were exhibiting needlework with the Society of Artists in London, and Mary continued to gain recognition, sending a work to Catherine the Great in 1783 and exhibiting at the Pantheon in 1787 after an introduction to Queen Charlotte. In 1789 she completed a notable needlework copy of Carlo Dolci’s Salvator Mundi, reputedly valued at 3000 guineas. From the late 1790s Linwood assembled an extensive exhibition of needlework pictures, praised as an extraordinary feat industry. Opening in Hanover Square in 1798 and later moving to Leicester Square, the exhibition toured major British cities before returning permanently to London, where it remained for over forty years.
Linwood’s technique, using specially woven tammy cloth and dyed woollen crewels, produced highly painterly effects admired in her time. Despite later legal troubles and declining health, her exhibition stayed open until shortly before her death in 1845. Her works survive in the Royal Collection, Leicestershire museums, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Her copy of Dolci’s Salvator Mundi was bequeathed to Queen Victoria.
Source: information supplied by the seller |