Scandal surrounded Grace Dalrymple Elliott, shown here in an intimate portrait by Gainsborough that conveys the fashionable whiteness of her skin, covered in makeup, including a black beauty mark. Depicted here in her twenties, Grace has powdered her hair, which was the style at the time. Her husband, Dr. John Elliott, had filed a suit for adultery against her and filed for divorce six years before this portrait was made. When the painting went on public display at the Royal Academy in 1782, Grace had just given birth to a daughter, Georgiana, whose father was claimed to be the Prince of Wales (the future King George IV) but who was raised in the household of the Earl of Cholmondeley. These were two of a number of powerful men in Britain and France with whom Mrs. Elliott—as she was known until her death in 1823—had had romantic associations. She was in Paris during the revolution and composed a detailed and at times sensational account of her life, including the execution of her lover, the Duc d’Orléans, and her imprisonment in four Paris prisons.
In response to seeing this portrait at the Royal Academy, one commentator derided it and her scandalous public persona. In this painting, the critic wrote, her eyes were “too characteristic of her vocation.” The portrait may have been commissioned by the Prince of Wales, the purported father of her child; a bill sent to him from Gainsborough’s widow after the artist’s death charges the prince for a “Head of Mrs. Elliott.” The bill does not seem to have ever been paid, nor was the painting ever delivered.
Grace Dalrymple Elliott
Grace Dalrymple, the third daughter of Hugh Dalrymple, an Edinburgh barrister, was born about 1754 and spent the early years of her life in the home of her mother’s parents, her own parents having separated. When her mother died she was sent by her father to a convent school in France. Even as a girl she was considered a beauty. One contemporary said she was “as rosy as Hebe, graceful as Venus”, and another declared that “her complexion was clear as the clouds of a May morning and tinged with the roseate blush of Aurora; her disposition was lively, and her temper mild and engaging.” Although her face was handsome, her figure was even more striking, for she was remarkably tall.
Married at seventeen to John (afterwards Sir John) Elliott, a wealthy physician eighteen years her senior who devoted most of his time to his profession, “Dally the Tall” soon became involved in affairs with other men. After her husband divorced her in 1776, she became the mistress of the Earl of Cholmondeley, and later of the Prince of Wales. On March 30, 1782, she gave birth to a daughter, fathered, she claimed, by the Prince. Lord Cholmondeley adopted the girl, Georgiana, who was brought up and educated in his family, where she was known as Miss Seymour. Mrs. Elliott continued with various liaisons, living alternately in London and on the Continent.
During the French Revolution she remained in Paris. Little is known of her life except what she recorded in her Journal, which is not always trustworthy. She was detained in the maison d’arrêt at Versailles after the fall of the Duc d’Orleans (whose mistress then she was), probably from about December of 1793 to October of 1794. While she claimed in her Journal to have been in four Paris prisons, her name is not on the register of any of them.
Mrs. Elliott returned to England in January of 1798 to find that her former patrons were not pleased to see her; it is said that the Prince of Wales took steps to have her return to France. The rest of her life is obscure. Her last years were spent at Ville d’Avray, near Paris, where she died on May 16, 1823.
The Frick portrait was exhibited at the Royal Academy about a month after Mrs. Elliott had given birth to her daughter. Millar believes it to be the portrait referred to as “a Head of Mrs. Elliot”, priced at £31 10s, in a list of pictures Gainsborough painted by order of the Prince of Wales. The hair was criticized, and Mrs. Elliott’s high coloring and expression were said to denote her calling. The portrait next appeared, in 1860, at the British Institution, lent by the Duke of Portland. In his catalogue of the Portland collection, Fairfax Murray suggested that the painting was acquired in France by the fifth Duke , but the portrait may have been inherited through Mrs. Elliott’s daughter, who married Lord William Charles Augustus Bentinck, son of the third Duke of Portland, and who died in 1813, thus predeceasing her mother. The only child after this union, a daughter, died unmarried. None of the early inventories of the Portland collection list the portrait of Mrs. Elliott.
An earlier portrait of Mrs. Elliott by Gainsborough, showing her full-length in a yellow gown with her hair piled high on her head, was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1778 (now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York). An oval portrait thought to represent Mrs. Elliott, attributed to Gainsborough Dupont, is in the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight, Cheshire.
Source: Art in The Frick Collection: Paintings, Sculpture, Decorative Arts, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996.
Bentinck (?). Duke of Portland, Grosvenor Square, London, and Welbeck Abbey, Nottinghamshire. Duveen. Frick, 1946.
Source: Paintings in The Frick Collection: American, British, Dutch, Flemish and German. Volume I. New York: The Frick Collection, 1968.
