Isabel Smith, Called Munia, Nurse to the Angerstein Family

Sir Thomas Lawrence 1769-1830

T00768 Isabel Smith, Called Munia, Nurse to the Angerstein Family circa 1800

Inscr. on the back, ‘This is a drawing of my Nurse Isabel Smith, called Munia, buried at Nh Willingham Lincolne. Wm Angerstein, drawn by Sr Thos Lawrence at Woodlands’.
Pencil and red chalk on card, 14 x 11 15/16 (35.5 x 30.25).
Bequeathed to the National Gallery by Miss May Rowley and transferred 1965.
Coll: By descent from Miss May Rowley’s grandfather, Richard Freeman Rowley, who married John Angerstein’s daughter Elizabeth Julia.

Lawrence became friendly with the Angerstein family in about 1790, when John Julius Angerstein (1735–1823) took charge of his financial affairs. Lawrence did a number of paintings and drawings of the family, which included John Julius’ son, John Angerstein, M.P. (1772/3–1858), who married in 1799 and to whose children, including William, Isabel Smith was nurse. Woodlands was the family villa at Blackheath.

Kenneth Garlick dates this drawing c. 1800 (letter of 2 September 1965). What appears to be a replica or copy of No. T00768 belongs to F.H.M. Fitzroy Newdegate (see Kenneth Garlick, ‘A Catalogue of the Paintings, Drawings and Pastels of Sir Thomas Lawrence’ in The Walpole Society; 1962–64, xxxix, 1964, p. 244: exh. Bristol, 1951 (48)). A poor repetition is repr. R. Brinsley Johnson, Mrs. Delany, 1925, facing p. 256, as ‘Mrs. Delany’.

Published in The Tate Gallery Report 1965–1966, London 1967.