Penelope Carwardine
(1729-1804), Miniature painterArtist associated with 4 portraits
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David Radcliffe
25 June 2022, 17:05
She is in the ODNB, though that essay needs to be updated (I'll be in touch with them). Penelope has an obituary in the Monthly Magazine (November 1804) 364, which supplies the death date, and there is a good illustrated blog post on her (with a portrait by Romney) here: https://georgianera.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/penelope-carwardine-1729-1804/
She was the second wife of James Butler (d.1774) who was organist of St Margaret's Church, Westminster and at Ranelagh Gardens—see the essay on him in Ingamells, Dictionary of British and Irish Travellers in Italy 1701-1800 (1997). It might be worthwhile to revisit the question of whether she, or her mother (or possibly a sister-in-law?) was exhibiting at the Society of Artists. James Butler, who was also a friend of Ozias Humphry, named Penelope's brother Thomas Carwardine as one of his executors, and it may be that the "Mrs Thomas (Ann) Carwardine" was in fact HIS wife and not Penelope. I am inclined to doubt the ODNB statement that Penelope was painting miniatures to earn her keep, but that's as may be. Her husband was certainly wealthy, as appears from his will.