Mrs James Alexander - Batoni, Pompeo (Italian painter and draftsman, 1708-1787) (My University, 1982)
'The subject of this tender and delicate portrait has traditionally been identified as Anne, second daughter of James Crawford, of Crawfordsburn, Co. Down. She married James Alexander (1730-1802) in London on 28 November, 1774. He had gone as a youth to India in the service of the East India Company and was so successful that in 1772, when little more than forty, he was able to return to Ireland with an immense fortune. One of the great Ulster landowners, he possessed estates worth #600,000, including Caledon Castle, which he purchased and improved. In 1790, in consideration of his political services, he was raised to the peerage as Baron Caledon and in 1793 was created 1st Earl of Caledon. Mrs. Alexander and her husband visited Rome in 1777; in the December of that year, soon after their return to Ireland, she died at their house in St. Stephen's Green, Dublin, shortly after the birth of her only son. It is not known whether James Alexander also sat to Batoni. The painting is one in a sequence of late works which disproves the often-made assertion that Batoni disliked painting portraits of women. These portraits are characterized by a profound new simplicity and naturalness of pose and an exceptionally tender and revealing treatment of the sitters. Mrs Alexander is probably holding a sprig of the evergreen myrtle, identified since the Renaissance with eternal love and, in particular, with conjugal fidelity.' (Greater London Council, 65-66)
Keywords: Alexander, Mrs. James; Alexander, Anne; Art -- Irish; Portrait painting -- Italian; Portraits -- Irish; Clothing and dress -- History -- 18th century; Gentry -- Ireland.; Love symbols; Women in art; 18th century