A young woman at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City admires Thomas Gainsborough's portrait of Grace Dalrymple Elliott.  Mrs. Elliott led a very colourful life as a Scottish courtesan, writer and spy. She was born in Scotland in about 1754 to dysfunctional upper middle class parents and was raised by her maternal grandparents for much of her young life before being sent to a convent school in France. At 17, she married a wealthy Scottish doctor twice her age. Quickly growing bored with her husband, she began a string of affairs with her husband's friends and circle that led to him divorce her. She then moved to London and began numerous liaisons with very well-connected men that included the Duke of Portland and the Prince of Wales.  Around this time, she had a daughter and it is generally thought to have been fathered by the Prince. Later, Grace moved to France to become the mistress of the Duke of Orleans, and during the French Revolution she remained in France, smuggling aristocratic families to safety and passing information to the British and the French court in exile.  She was eventually suspected of espionage and imprisoned, but survived and was later released.  She died a wealthy woman in 1823 at the age of 69 at a villa outside Paris.  The final owner of the portrait was William K. Vanderbilt, grandson of the American railroad magnate, who purchased and displayed this portrait in his Fifth Avenue gilded age mansion before bequeathing it to the Met in 1920.

 

Oil on Hardboard

24 x 18 Inches

2019

Available for Purchase