Her Royal Highness, The Duchess of Gloucester (formerly Maria Waldegrave, Countess Dowager)
Engraved and published by John Finlayson British
After Sir Joshua Reynolds British
Sitter Maria Waldegrave, Duchess of Gloucester and Edinburgh British
Not on view
This engraving reproduces Reynolds's 1764–65 portrait of Maria, the widow of James Waldegrave, 2nd Earl of Waldegrave (d. 1763). Shown in mourning, she wears a dark gown and veil, rests her head on one hand and gazes up and to the right. In 1766, the sitter remarried George III's younger brother, Prince William Frederick, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh, a union of which the king disapproved that stimulated the passage of the Royal Marriages Act. Maria was the illegitimate daughter of Dorothy Clement and Edward Walpole, the younger son of Sir Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, and grew up at Frogmore House, Windsor. The related painting is in the collection of the Duke of Grafton at Euston Hall.
