The art world in London at the time was a small one another portraitist, Maria Cosway, was one of Angelica's closest friends, and it's easy to imagine Maria introducing Samuel Shelley to Angelica as a possible patron. The Shelley miniature also seems to capture both the flirtatious charm and intelligence that Angelica's contemporaries all mention.įrom the clothes and hair style, I'd guess that this portrait was painted in the 1780s, the time when Angelica was living in London. It's an uncommon face for an 18thc beauty: a long nose (which also turns up in portraits of her father), a small mouth, the dark, slightly close-set eyes. One is a portrait of her with her son and servant by the American artist John Trumbull, detail, upper right, and the other a print after a painting by English artist Richard Cosway, lower left. To my eye, the Trumbull and Shelley portraits show the same woman. There are only two other portraits of Angelica known today. I was also convinced it was a forgotten portrait of Angelica Schuyler Church. Shelley was famous for painting society beauties of the day, and this one - identified only as a portrait of a lady - is a gorgeous example of his work. Posted by the account of the Philip Mould Gallery in London, this portrait is by the well-known Georgian miniature painter Samuel Shelley (1750-1808). So imagine my surprise when the lovely face, upper left, turned up in my Instagram feed this morning. Characters become very real to me (especially the ones who were real people - I know, weird writer problems) to the point that I half-expect to run into them at the local grocery. To me, she's the older sister of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton, the heroine of my historical novel, I, Eliza Hamilton, published by Kensington Books in September, 2017. I've been wallowing deep in my research of the Schuyler and Hamilton families for a good long time now. She may (or may not) have had an affair with Thomas Jefferson, and she may (or may not) have had one with her brother-in-law Alexander Hamilton, too. She was a patron of artists Benjamin West, John Trumbull, and Maria Cosway. Angelica was admired by gentlemen as diverse as Benjamin Franklin, the Prince of Wales, the Marquis de Lafayette, Whig party leader Charles James Fox and playwright Richard Brinsely Sheridan.
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