John Raphael Smith after Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Lady Catherine Pelham Clinton.

14 x 20 inches

This is one of the most tender and charming of the mezzotint portraits produced after Sir Joshua Reynolds. Lady Catherine, seen here feeding her brood of chickens, was born on 6th April 1776, the only daughter of Henry Pelham Clinton, styled Earl of Lincoln and granddaughter of Henry, Duke of Newcastle. She married the son of the Earl of Radnor in 1800 but died in her confinement of a second daughter in 1804. This print was one of the mezzotints that fetched the extraordinary price of $3990 during the mezzotint mania of the early C20th, when a first state came up for sale at Christie's New York in 1914!

John Raphael Smith was born in Derby in 1752 but travelled to London in 1767 where he began his career as an artist. He started work as a painter of both miniatures and larger scale paintings but went on to develop his skill as an engraver. In 1781 he moved to a studio in Oxford Street and by 1784 he had been appointed as mezzotint engraver to the Prince of Wales. By 1787 he had settled permanently in Covent Garden, until his death in Doncaster in 1812. Smith's engravings count amongst the most admired examples of mezzotint.