Ann Yearsley
© National Portrait Gallery, London
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Ann Yearsley
by Joseph Grozer, after Sarah Shiells
mezzotint, published 1787
17 5/8 in. x 13 1/8 in. (447 mm x 332 mm) paper size
Reference Collection
NPG D4452
Artistsback to top
- Joseph Grozer (circa 1755-1798), Mezzotint engraver. Artist or producer associated with 29 portraits.
- Sarah Shiells, Artist. Artist or producer associated with 2 portraits.
This portraitback to top
This mezzotint, after a painting by the otherwise unknown artist Sarah Shiells, depicts Yearsley in confident, even defiant pose. She looks up from her writing with a knowing stare, as if aware that she confounds contemporary assumptions and is proud of the fact.
Linked publicationsback to top
- Eger, Elizabeth; Peltz, Lucy, Brilliant Women: 18th Century Bluestockings, 2008 (accompanying the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from 13 March to 15 June 2008), p. 45
Linked displays and exhibitionsback to top
- Brilliant Women: 18th-Century Bluestockings (13 March 2008 - 15 June 2008)
Events of 1787back to top
Current affairs
Social reformers Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson found the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade in London with support from John Wesley, Josiah Wedgwood and others.George III shows first signs of mental instability in November.
Art and science
Painter Robert Barker takes out a patent on the Panorama..Astronomer William Herschel discovers the two moons of Uranus, Titania and Oberon.
The original Lord's Cricket Ground holds its first cricket match.
International
Captain William Bligh sets sail for Tahiti on The Bounty.First performance of composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Don Giovanni at the National Theatre, Prague.
A British ship lands a party of freed slaves as the first modern settlers in Sierra Leone.
Captain Arthur Phillip leaves Portsmouth with eleven ships full of convicts to establish a penal colony in Australia.
Bahamas become a British colony.
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