Barbara Countess of Coventry.

James Watson after Sir Joshua Reynolds

Barbara Countess of Coventry.

London, Robert Sayer c. 1790

Mezzotint

360x260mm

£180

A rare, half length portrait of Barbara (d. 1804), daughter of the 10^th Lord St. John, and second wife of George William 6^th Earl of Coventry. She wears flowing draperies and her ermine lined peeress’s robe, leans on the pedestal of a column, looking to the left. In 1764 she became the second wife of the jealous and petulant 6^th Earl of Coventry, after the death of his first wife the famously beautiful Maria Gunning, elder of the two Gunning sisters.