Lady Anne Abdy (1788/9-1875) was the illegitimate daughter of Richard, Marquess of Wellesley (the elder brother of Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington) and Hyacinthe Gabrielle Roland. She married Sir William Abdy in 1806 but he divorced her in 1816, after she eloped with his friend Lord Charles Bentinck. She married Bentinck shortly afterwards. Here Lady Abdy is depicted allegorically, as a Bacchante (a follower of Bacchus, the Roman god of wine). The lack of restraint with which Lady Abdy is portrayed led to the portrait being admired by a contemporary commentator for its ‘wild luxuriancy’. The drinking cup may be a reference to the sitter’s character – Emma Hamilton, wife of Sir William Hamilton and mistress of Lord Nelson, was portrayed as a Bacchante on several occasions.

This miniature is one of the series of paintings in the ‘Gallery of Beauties’ commissioned by George IV when Prince Regent. These were portraits of fashionable ladies, one list of whom is in the royal archives and another printed in the Ladies Monthly Museum XVI (January 1814). A contemporary account records that the prince was ‘forming a superb boudoir for their reception’. Opulent frames for the paintings were ordered from Rundell, Bridge and Rundell in 1814. The series may have been conceived as a nineteenth-century version of the ‘Windsor Beauties’ painted by Sir Peter Lely for Anne Hyde, duchess of York in 1662-5, and Sir Godfey Kneller’s ‘Hampton Court Beauties’ painted for Queen Mary around 1691.

Anne Mee (1780/5-1851) was the daughter of the artist John Foldsone. She was educated in London and was a protégée and pupil of the portrait painter George Romney. Lady Courtown introduced her to Queen Charlotte, and Charlotte Papendiek, journalist and assistant keeper of the wardrobe to Queen Charlotte, described Anne Mee drawing the queen and princesses at Windsor in 1790. Mee visited frequently after that date and enjoyed long-standing royal patronage.