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Lot description
Anne Mee (nee Foldsone) (British, c.1775-1851) Portrait miniature of a young girl, wearing white dress and coral necklace, her arm resting on a leather-bound book watercolour on ivory, in a gilt-metal frame with hair motif to reverse h:8 cm Anne Mee was one of the few professional female miniaturists of the early nineteenth century. She began working as an artist after the death of her father and continued after her marriage to the Irish barrister Joseph Mee. Many female artists ceased to work after marriage but she continued with restrictions imposed by her husband and noted by the diarist Joseph Farington; '[her husband] had consented to let her paint ladies only who were never to be attended [at the sittings] by gentlemen'. Mee was a pupil of George Romney and clearly an artist with natural talent. Before her marriage, during the early 1790s, she had worked at Windsor Castle under the patronage of the Prince of Wales. Her miniatures show the influence of other artists working in the circle of the Prince, including Richard Cosway. The present portrait is a particularly sensitive study of a young girl, showing her learning with the inclusion of a book. Her gaze is to the side, as though she has been caught off guard. Mee's portraits of children and young adults were particularly successful, possibly due to the fact that she had six children of her own by the time she was thirty-three.