An exceptional embroidered crewel woolpicture of hanging partridge

by Mary Linwood, after the painting by Moses Haughton

Footnotes

Mary Linwood (1755-1845)

During her lifetime, Mary Linwood embroidered pictures or 'needle paintings', copying famous paintings by artists such as Raphael, Rubens and Gainsborough and personalities of the time, such as Napoleon. She had her wools specially dyed in Leicester and a woven, coarse linen tammy cloth prepared for her. Long and short stitches were used to look like brush strokes with silk for highlights.

She started embroidery at a very young age and she eventually moved to London and opened an exhibition of her work at The Panthenon, Oxford Street. In 1775 she had an audience with King George III at Windsor and showed him several pieces of her work and received the Queen's 'highest encomiums'. In 1776 and 1778 her pictures were seen at the exhibition of the Society of Artists. Her fame spread and in 1783 the Empress Catherine of Russia was pleased to accept an example of her work. In 1808 she met Napoleon whose portrait she embroidered twice. He later awarded her the Freedom of Paris. In 1809 she moved to a permanent gallery at Saville House, Leicester Square, the former studio of Sir Joshua Reynolds, where she held an exhibition of fifty-five needle paintings. It became a popular tourist attraction and the exhibition was one of the first to illuminate the various works by gaslight so that they could be viewed well into the late afternoon. A guide book at the time observed 'This beautiful style of needlework is the invention of a Leicestershire lady, and consists of fifty-nine of the finest pictures in the English and foreign schools of art, possessing all the correct drawing, just colouring and light and shade of the original pictures from which they are taken; in a word, Miss Linwood's exhibition is one of the most beautiful the metropolis can boast and should unquestionably be witnessed, as it deserves to be, by every admirer of art'. Her last work was completed when she was seventy-five having taken ten years to complete. The exhibition remained open until her death in 1845. After her death she bequeathed one piece to Queen Victoria, and on 23rd April 1846, Christie's held an auction of her remaining work. Her work is now displayed in the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Leicester Museum and Kew Palace.

Moses Haughton, the elder (1734-1804) from Wednesbury near Birmingham was brought up as an enamel painter on Wednesbury enamel, but is especially noted as a painter of still life.