Later Victorian Portraits Catalogue
Louisa Anne Beresford (née Stuart), Marchioness of Waterford (1818-1891), Watercolour painter and philanthropist
- Gallery portraits
- All known portraits
- Biography and References
Painter; born Louisa Anne Stuart, 14 April 1818 in Paris, daughter of diplomat Lord Stuart de Rothesay and sister to Charlotte, Viscountess Canning. Married 1842 Henry Beresford, 3rd Marquess of Waterford (died in a hunting accident 1859); inherited Highcliffe, Hampshire, her grandfather’s estate 1867; friend of artists and writers; published illustrations to the Babes in the Wood (1848) but exhibited only occasionally until the 1880s, when she sent works to the Dudley Gallery, Grosvenor Gallery, Royal Hibernian Academy and elsewhere; her skills were admired by Ruskin and Watts, but her main claim to fame now rests on the large-scale biblical scenes she painted inside the estate school at Ford, Northumberland, where she lived in widowhood and where she died 12 May 1891.
In 1868, she was described as ‘the once peerless Lady Waterford – still wonderfully handsome – her profile one of the most beautiful I have ever seen. She was pleasant and unaffected.’ [1] Later she was remembered ‘with love and even veneration … Her manner, as she advanced in life and forgot her natural shyness, was charming. She was adored by her friends and her relatives and by the poor to whom she devoted such a great part of her life.’ [2]
Dr Jan Marsh
In 1868, she was described as ‘the once peerless Lady Waterford – still wonderfully handsome – her profile one of the most beautiful I have ever seen. She was pleasant and unaffected.’ [1] Later she was remembered ‘with love and even veneration … Her manner, as she advanced in life and forgot her natural shyness, was charming. She was adored by her friends and her relatives and by the poor to whom she devoted such a great part of her life.’ [2]
Dr Jan Marsh
Footnotesback to top
1) Gower 1883, p.188, quoting his own diary for Apr. 1868.
2) Erskine 1910, p.286.
Referencesback to top
Beal & Cornforth 1992Beal, M., and J. Cornforth, British Embassy, Paris: The House and its Works of Art, London, 1992.
Bryant 2004a
Bryant, B., G.F. Watts Portraits: Fame and Beauty in Victorian Society, exh. cat., NPG, London, 2004.
Erskine 1910
Erskine, Mrs S., ‘The Drawings of Lady Waterford’, The Studio, vol.49, 1910, pp.283–6.
Franklin 2011
Franklin, R., Lady Waterford Artist and Philanthropist, Brighton, 2011
Gould 2004
Gould, V.F., G.F. Watts: The Last Great Victorian, London, 2004.
Gower 1883
Gower, R.S., My Reminiscences, 2 vols, London, 1883.
Hare 1893
Hare, A., The Story of Two Noble Lives: Being Memorials of Charlotte, Countess Canning, and Louisa, Marchioness of Waterford, 3 vols, London, 1893.
Joicey 1991
Joicey, M., Louisa Anne Marchioness of Waterford, Ford, Northumberland, 1991.
Millar 1995
Millar, D., The Victorian Watercolours and Drawings in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, London, 1995.
Millar 1996
Millar, D., Watercolours by Charlotte, Viscountess Canning: Lady in Waiting to Queen Victoria, Harewood House, Leeds, 1996.
O’Donoghue 1908–22
O’Donoghue, F., Catalogue of Engraved British Portraits preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, 5 vols, London, 1908–22 (and vol.6, H.M. Hake, Supplement and indexes, 1925).
Rutherford & Wilks 2001
Rutherford, E., and S. Wilks, Heirs and Graces: Portrait Miniatures from Harewood and the Royal Collection, exh.cat., [Harewood House, Leeds], 2001.
Stocker 1988
Stocker, M., Royalist and Realist: The Life and Work of Sir Joseph Edgar Boehm, New York and London, 1988.
Surtees 1972
Surtees, V., Sublime and Instructive: Letters from John Ruskin…, London, 1972.
Wills 2003
Wills, C., High Society: The Life and Art of Sir Francis Grant, 1803–1878, Edinburgh, 2003.
Yeldham 2004
Yeldham, C., ‘Beresford, Louisa Anne, marchioness of Waterford (1818–1891)’, ODNB, Oxford, 2004.