Anne Seymour Damer (née Conway)

© National Portrait Gallery, London

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Anne Seymour Damer (née Conway)

by Richard Cosway
watercolour on ivory, 1785
2 3/8 in. x 1 7/8 in. (60 mm x 48 mm) oval
Purchased, 1979
Primary Collection
NPG 5236

Sitterback to top

Artistback to top

  • Richard Cosway (1742-1821), Miniature painter. Artist or producer associated with 101 portraits, Sitter in 16 portraits.

Linked publicationsback to top

  • Perry, Gill (introduction) Roach, Joseph (appreciation) and West, Shearer (appreciation), The First Actresses: Nell Gwyn to Sarah Siddons, 2011 (accompanying the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from 20 October 2011 to 8 January 2012), p. 125
  • Saywell, David; Simon, Jacob, Complete Illustrated Catalogue, 2004, p. 163
  • Walker, Richard, Miniatures: 300 Years of the English Miniature, 1998, p. 85 Read entry

    Mrs Damer, daughter of Field Marshal Conway and granddaughter of the Duke of Argyll, was encouraged in the art of sculpture by her life-long friend Horace Walpole, who bequeathed to her his beloved house, Strawberry Hill. She made portrait busts of many of her contemporaries, including Nelson, who sat to her in Naples in 1799 and gave her the bloodstained coat he had worn at the Battle of the Nile. Cosway's miniature, one of several, shows her as a beautiful young woman.

  • Walker, Richard, Regency Portraits, 1985, p. 143

Subject/Themeback to top

Events of 1785back to top

Current affairs

George Prince of Wales secretly marries his mistress Maria Fitzherbert in contravention of the Royal Marriages Act of 1772.
Prime Minister William Pitt introduces a bill proposing parliamentary reform and the abolition of 'rotten boroughs' but is defeated.

Art and science

William Cowper publishes his best -known poem The Task.
James Boswell publishes The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, narrating his travels with the late writer Samuel Johnson.
Physician and naturalist James Hutton presents his studies of local rocks to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, launching the era of scientific geology.

International

Warren Hastings resigns as Governor-General of Bengal and returns to England. His trial begins on charges of corruption in the administration of India.
French sculptor Jean Antoine Houdon crosses the Atlantic to sculpt a statue of George Washington.
British government establishes a permanent land force in the Eastern Caribbean, based in Barbados.

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