Portrait of a Woman, Said to Be Lady Sophia Boyle

Anne Mee is first recorded in 1790, when she was working at Windsor Castle on portraits of Queen Charlotte and the princesses. She married Joseph Mee, an Armagh barrister, before 1804. Her style is closely based on that of Richard Cosway (see 62.49), and her earlier works are sometimes mistaken for his. In her later, more florid style she painted the series Gallery of Beauties of George III (Richard Walker, The Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century Miniatures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, Cambridge, 1992, nos. 857–74, ill.) in emulation of the earlier Windsor Beauties of Sir Peter Lely (1618–1680).

On receipt at The Met, this miniature was described as a work by Richard Cosway. The style was correctly recognized as that of Anne Mee by Richard Allen in 1977 and Hermione Waterfield in 1978. Like The Met’s other miniature by Mee (17.190.1150), it is an early work, of about 1790.

[2016; adapted from Reynolds and Baetjer 1996]

Moses Lazarus, New York (until d. 1885); his daughters, Josephine and Sarah Lazarus, New York (1885–1888/95)

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "European Miniatures in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," November 5, 1996–January 5, 1997, no. 168.

Graham Reynolds with the assistance of Katharine Baetjer. European Miniatures in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1996, pp. 147–48, no. 168, ill., call it an early work and date it about 1790.