What’s in a name? The posthumous fortune of Katherine Read (1723–1778)

 

 

 

 

Catriona Seth

 

 

What do Joseph Highmore (1692–1780), George Knapton (1698–1778), Thomas Hudson (c1701–79), James Russel (1720–63), Jean-Étienne Liotard (1702–89), William Hoare (1707–92), Allan Ramsay (1713–1784), Nathaniel Hone (1718–1784), Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792), Gavin Hamilton (1723–98), Thomas Patch (1725–82), Francis Cotes (1726–1770), Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788), Anton Raphael Mengs (1728–1779), Simon Pine (?–1772), Robert Edge Pine (1730–88), George Romney (1734–1802), Nathaniel Dance (1735–1811), David Allan (1744–1796), John Russell (1745–1806), Daniel Gardner (1750–1805) and John Raphael Smith (1752–1812) have in common? All are artists, and most are known chiefly for their portraits. Although more or less contemporary, they worked in different places, used varying techniques and could not be grouped under the heading of a single school. Some are famous: Reynolds and Gainsborough are still household names. Liotard enjoyed prestigious commissions from royal families and has been the subject of retrospective exhibitions; his pictures are on show in major public collections. Ramsay’s portraits hang in pride of place in Scottish galleries and stately homes. But who remembers Simon Pine? Or even Thomas Hudson?

All the names – and the list is probably not exhaustive – are those of men credited with having painted pictures now known or thought to be by Scottish artist Katherine Read (1723–1778).^[1] Works by her have also been described as by followers or the circle of Cotes, Ramsay, Russell and other contemporaries such as William Beechey (1753–1839) or John Downman (1750–1824). More vaguely yet, they have been catalogued as belonging to the British, English or French school. There has even been an ascription to the non-existent Charles Read. This article deals with several misattributions of Katherine Read’s pastels and oil paintings. It envisages some of the consequences of the failure to recognise her work. While evoking a specific case, it offers more general reflections on the (re)identification of artists.

Nothing is known of Katherine Read’s early training. After her uncle Sir John Wedderburn’s execution in November 1746 as one of the Jacobite martyrs, she left for the Continent. She was ‘some time at Paris with [Quentin de] La Tour’ (who lived 1704–1788)^[2] before going to Rome in late 1750. There she studied under another Frenchman with Jacobite connections, Louis-Gabriel Blanchet (1701–1772), and developed a clientèle both of grand tourists and of the Roman nobility. Her talents were greatly admired when she returned to Britain in 1753 and set up a studio in London. She enjoyed a successful career as a portraitist, and was renowned in particular for her pastels. In 1777, she travelled to Fort St George (later Madras, now Chennai). She died on board ship on her return voyage in 1778. Her name would have been familiar to the artists to whom her pictures are ascribed, but also to a broader audience. She was ‘the celebrated Miss Read’, who was made ‘Painter in Crayons to Her Majesty’.^[3] How can so many diverse reattributions of her art be explained? And what does this tell us about questions like canonisation, artistic snobbery and market valuations? 

Art historians are used to pictures being reassigned thanks to research into provenance and technique as well as connoisseurship – popular television programmes have made such questions familiar to a wider public – but the scale and breadth of assignations of portraits by Read to others is breathtaking, with seemingly more wrong than right attributions of her work over the years.^[4] One thing, above all, makes such errors possible: Read was not in the habit of signing her paintings – and we have nothing resembling an account book which might help us trace commissions.

 

 

Unsigned pictures

Katherine Read’s letters from Italy to her older brother Alexander Read, a Scots custom house sloop officer, hint at her career strategy. On 6 January 1752 she writes: ‘As I have staid one year in Rome for Improvement, I must certainly stay in it another for Name, and then you’ll see I’ll top it with the best of them.’^[5] Her ambitions are clear. ‘Name’ refers here to her intangible reputation and potential commercial success. The painter does not appear to associate it with imposing a signature on a canvas.^[6] Her recognisable skill is her signature: she identifies with her talent rather than her official identity.

Read was highly articulate, and fluent in both English and French. Propriety led to her being referred to as ‘Miss Read’; some family members called her Kate. She signs letters ‘Kath. Read’.^[7] The lack of signature on her pictures is less uncommon than one might think. Neil Jeffares observes: ‘Broadly speaking La Tour (who arrogantly stated that he didn’t need to, his work was so good), Rosalba, Ducreux, Lundberg, Read, Vivien didn’t sign; while Liotard, Russell, Mme Roslin, Labille-Guiard, Capet, Perronneau, Valade, Vigée and Vigée Le Brun all did. Usually. Boucher sometimes.’^[8] Read would have become aware of dubious practices in the art world during her time in Rome. Tourists bought indifferent pictures or modern copies passed off as Old Masters thanks sometimes to added counterfeit names. The naïve collector saw his apparent discernment vindicated and believed he had found a bargain. The cynical antiquarian lined his pockets. This would have been enough to lead anyone to be suspicious of the value of signatures!

While Read may have been influenced by her ‘old master’ La Tour,^[9] certain reasons could have made signing unimportant to her.^[10] Her pictures – apart from, for instance, the likeness of Queen Charlotte designed to attract public attention, and portraits of close relatives such as Helena Beatson, which may have been intended to advertise her talents beyond the family circle and to serve as models for remunerative engravings – were not, when painted, intended for circulation on an open market. They are, usually, responses to direct commissions. In that respect, there was no necessity for future authentication. They are not investments, but pictures destined for enjoyment by those closest to the sitters. They seek to offer a resemblance (sometimes marked by socially identifiable aspects such as fine jewellery or garments),^[11] a talent Read possessed according to her contemporaries. Frederick Kielmansegge, a Hanoverian nobleman, describes a February 1762 visit in his diary: ‘On the 9^th we went first of all to the studio of an artist, Miss Re[a]d, in order to see her portrait in pastille of a lady of our acquaintance, Lady Diana Clavering, whose picture we took home with us. From the various good portraits which I have seen by her, I gather that her work is very successful; some of her portraits of the beauties of society were very good likenesses.’^[12]

At public exhibitions, Read’s pictures were shown under her name. Prestigious sitters’ identities were usually masked by descriptive labels (eg, Portrait of a Lady, Three Children in Crayons) (Pl 1) which made them anonymous or at least maintained discretion in such a way that most private individuals would only be recognised by those close to them.

 

 

 

 

1 Catalogue of the fifth Royal Academy exhibition, 1773 (p20). Royal Academy of Arts, London

 

 

On 22 April 1762, the Marquess of Kildare recounts in a letter to the Marchioness: ‘I went last Monday to see the Exhibition, and the first thing I saw when I went into the room was Charles’s picture, and as a companion to it, a pretty little girl with a rabbit in her arms.’ The portrait he was referring to was that of Charles James FitzGerald, Lord Lecale, their third son (born 30 June 1756), which was entered in the Free Society exhibition under no. 52 as Read’s Young gentleman with a dog.^[13]

Contemporaries would have known a Read was a Read and have looked out for such works. External prompts can be helpful when attributing an unsigned picture: certain artists or clients add names on the back of the canvas or on a piece of paper. Contemporary inscriptions are not necessarily autograph and some may be inaccurate. Others offer vital information: a note on the back of the frame of a pastel portrait sold in a 2021 Paris auction as anonymous, ‘école française du XVIII^e siècle’ (but immediately spotted as a Read by Neil Jeffares), with an erroneous suggestion that the sitter was an artist, probably Carle van Loo, says: ‘Opera di Miss Caterina Read/ In segno di Perpetua …/ Bruto Marcello Porta l’Anno 1751’.^[14] (Pl 2, Pl 3, Pl 3a).

 

 

2 Katherine Read (1723–78), Count Porta, c1751. Pastel on paper, 48 x 36 cm. J.612.401.
Reproduced with kind permission of Étude l’Huillier

 

 

 

3 Verso of portrait in Pl 2, showing the partly illegible inscription. Reproduced with kind permission of Étude l’Huillier

 

 

 

3a Detail of Pl 3a

 

 

This fits with Read’s mention, in a letter to her brother Alexander, in January 1752, that she had gifted ‘one Count Port[a] who is a very great friend of mine’, his head in crayons.^[15] The mutilated Italian sentence referring to perpetual friendship, admiration or something of that ilk (whether written by the artist or a third party) goes some way to explaining the presence of Read’s name, united with that of her sitter – it functions a bit like an ex dono from the author in a book.^[16]

 

 

The Double Duchess

One of Read’s most celebrated works, a portrait of Elizabeth Gunning (1733–1790), Duchess of Hamilton and Brandon, then Duchess of Argyll, which hangs at Inverary Castle in Scotland, includes the indication ‘K. Read’ in large red cursive script.^[17] This bears no resemblance to the extant signatures I have seen on documents. The red letters are likely to be a later addition by a third party, designed to authenticate the work, a form of boast. The 18th century, and even more so the 19th, saw campaigns, within many families who possessed portraits of ancestors, to make such additions based on (sometimes inexact) details they had at their disposal, often with the avowed aim of identifying sitters and/or artists as well as, less laudably, to stress the owners’ connections with important individuals and families. Jobbing painters were recruited to inscribe information which, by figuring on the picture itself, changes the viewing experience. It suggests the documentary value of the work outweighs the artistic one, or at least that the representation of a given person or the identity of the artist has become more important than the degree of likeness involved or the quality of the art per se.^[18] We would now see a third party inscribing an artist or a sitter’s identity on the actual work as defacing a portrait. The picture of Elizabeth Gunning is by Katherine Read, ascribed to her by the inscription, but not signed by her: there is apparently nothing analogous on the other pastels in the collection, one of which, representing Maria Gunning, Countess of Coventry, the Duchess’s sister, is often seen as a companion piece.^[19]

Within Read’s lifetime, the picture of the ‘Double Duchess’ circulated widely in print form, probably with the sitter’s encouragement (but without the inclusion of the red letters which these plates are likely to predate): it was engraved by James Finlayson in a 1770 mezzotint, (Pl 4) as well as by anonymous artists, who were doubtless hoping for a quick profit.

 

 

4 Elizabeth, Duchess of Hamilton and Brandon and of Argyll by John Finlayson (1730–1776),
after Katherine Read (1723–78), 1770. Mezzotint, 45.4 x 35.2 cm. Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, USA

 

 

 

5 Detail of Pl 4, showing name of the artist who painted the original portrait after which the mezzotint was made

 

 

When Read’s name is given below the portrait, as here, an initial ‘C’ is substituted for the ‘K’ of ‘Kath[erine]’ (Pl 5) which again suggests the inscription on the picture is a later addition not seen by the engravers – or by those of the engravers who were working from Read’s portrait directly. There are also painted reproductions of the portrait of the ‘Double Duchess’.^[20] It was not unknown for amateur artists to borrow engravings, which could be rented from print shops, in order to copy them for their own enjoyment.

The ‘Double Duchess’ was probably Read’s most popular work in terms of reach. It appears on a large 1875 Minton earthenware portrait charger by E Broughton;^[21] a version of the likeness was included as one of the plates in John Heneage Jesse’s 1882 George Selwyn and his contemporaries; and the portrait was sufficiently appreciated early in the 20th century to figure on cigarette cards like John Player and Sons’ 1914 ‘Bygone Beauties’ collection (no. 13: ‘Elizabeth Gunning after Catherine Read’). The presentation on the reverse adds, after 3 sentences on the sitter, ‘The portrait is by Catherine Read, who from 1760 to her death in 1778 was a very fashionable painter, particularly of children and society ladies’ (Pl 6, Pl 7).^[22]

 

 

 

6 Elizabeth Gunning, after Katherine Read (1723–78), ‘A Series of 25 Bygone Beauties’, John Player and Sons, 1914, recto.
Print on card. Private collection

 

7 Verso of Pl 6

 

 

 

 

8 Elizabeth Gunning, ‘Famous Women A Series of 27 Real Photos’, Carreras, early 20th century, recto.
Print on card. Private collection

 

9 Verso of Pl 8

 

 

It also features, without the artist being named, as no. 17 of the undated (early 20th century) ‘Famous Women A Series of 27 Real Photos’ issued for Carreras ‘High-Class Cigarettes’ (Pl 8, Pl 9). In a reproduction designed to be framed, the portrait was offered as one of three plates with the 1919 Pear’s soap Annual. In this iteration, it is simply titled ‘Her Grace’ – a shortcut to indicate the sitter is a Duchess or a description of her main quality? A caption on the trompe-l’œil mount affirms that the colourised print is ‘From the original picture by C. Read’. The work’s celebrity (and the numerous engravings after it) doubtless preserved the author’s identity for the Player’s cigarette card and this larger reproduction.

 

Cherchez l’homme…

During her formative years in Italy, Read painted a number of portraits, many of which have not been traced.^[23] One which has been re-identified is her oil-painting of Kenneth Mackenzie, Lord Fortrose (1744–81) and his tutor, James Mackenzie. The landscape format dual portrait also includes Fortrose’s dog. On the canvas you can read the subjects’ identities: ‘Kenneth/6^th Earl of Seaforth’ on the lower left, and ‘Dr Mackenzie’ on the right. Other words, probably added at the same time (well after the picture was painted, since Fortrose only succeeded to the earldom in 1761), have been removed. They apparently included, on the upper left, ‘Mengs pinx^t’ with an ambiguous status between attribution and false signature, according to the value the viewer might place on the information.^[24]

Family tradition may have recalled that Fortrose spent much of his youth in Italy. The portrait was clearly executed by a talented artist. The heirs, possibly advised by a third party, attributed it to Mengs who was in Rome around the right time; his name was duly included with the identities of the sitters. Anyone would be delighted to own a picture by him, despite Reynolds’s attempts, in 1788, to discredit the competition: ‘I will venture to prophecy, that two of the last distinguished painters of that country [Italy], I mean Pompeio Battoni, and Raffaelle Mengs, however great their names may at present sound in our ears, will very soon fall … into what is little short of total oblivion.’^[25] Unsurprisingly, Reynolds mentions no women – his failure to take account of Read’s talents throughout her life is telling.^[26] When Sotheby’s sold the portrait of the Mackenzies with the dog for the Berkeley family in 1988, the earlier attribution to Mengs was considered to be erroneous. Michael Wynne, the art historian and former keeper of the National Gallery of Ireland, consulted by the auctioneer before the sale, doubtless took into account family recollections that the portrait was painted on the Continent. Seeking a contender among artists, he plumped for a contemporary of Read who arrived in Rome two years later: Nathaniel Hone (1718–84). Wynne may have been unaware of Read’s presence in Italy. He presumably relied on his eye and acquired knowledge, rather than specific research, and reached an inaccurate conclusion. Was it the new owner, after purchasing the picture at the auction, who proceeded to cover up the erroneous inscription attributing the painting to Mengs, but stopped short of putting Hone’s name in its place? This, in itself, suggests an inflection in the relationship we have to existing works, and a greater respect for their integrity.

Even without an inscription, both family lore (Mengs) and connoisseurship (Hone)^[27] were proved wrong thanks to research by Margery Morgan. Her starting point was a 1752 letter which abbé Grant, the Scottish catholic agent at Rome, wrote to Alexander Read, the painter’s brother, referring to: ‘Dr. Mackenzie who is governor to my Lord Fortrose’s son, whose portrait she [Katherine Read] has done along with that of his young friend on the same cloath.’^[28] The two (false) attributions, to Mengs and Hone, illustrate the adage that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

 

 

Framing mistakes

Read’s 1763 portrait of a Scottish noblewoman, acquired from her family by the McManus in Dundee in 2021, bears a later inscription on the canvas: ‘Willielma Maxwell ano. 1762/ Daughter & Co-heiress of William/ Maxwell of Preston in the Stewartry/ of Kirkcudbright Esq. married ano. 1761/ to John Lord Glenorchy’ (Pl 10).^[29]

 

 

10 Willielma Campbell (1741–1786, née Maxwell), Lady Glenorchy, by Katherine Read (1723–1778), 1762.
Oil on canvas, 127.2 x 101.9 cm. McManus, Dundee (2021–10). Dundee Art Galleries and Museums

 

 

It was designed to hang side-by-side with a portrait of her husband, Viscount Glenorchy (1738–1771), by Gainsborough (which boasts a matching inscription).^[30] Both are mentioned in Musgrave’s Catalogues of Painted Portraits in many of the capital Mansion houses of Scotland as hanging in the dining-room at Taymouth in 1796, ten years after Lady Glenorchy’s death, but not credited to any artist (though other pictures in the house are attributed to Jamieson or Van Dyck):

 

44. John Lord Glenorchy (by the 3d Earl’s second Marriage) marr.d in 1761 Willielma Maxwell dau.r & Co-heiress of William Maxwell of Preston in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright Esqr… painted in 1762.

45. Portrait of that Lady… 1762.^[31]

 

 

The information, which parallels that on the canvas depicting Lord Glenorchy, suggests the inscriptions were present when the list was compiled. An 1852 Taymouth inventory attributes both pictures to Gainsborough describing no. 16 as: ‘Lady Glenorchy the good Wife of the preceding [Lord Glenorchy] in a blue dress trimed [sic] with white lace holding a Guitar in her hand.’^[32] This is the portrait which now hangs in the McManus. Like the companion piece of Viscount Glenorchy (private collection), its frame bears a cartouche identifying the artist. Both, rather than attributing the portraits to either Read or Gainsborough, name Ramsay (Pl 11).

 

 

11 Detail of frame of portrait in Pl 10

 

 

In all fairness to whoever decided to have the labels added – presumably in the second half of the 19th or in the 20th century, this might be an honest mistake.

What does this triple attribution of Lady Glenorchy’s likeness tell us (Read to Gainsborough to Ramsay)? When the Glenorchys sat for their portraits, nothing suggested his lordship’s painter was more distinguished – indeed Read was paid more than Gainsborough.^[33] Unlike Read, whom he outlived, Gainsborough, whose works hang in major museums, is still well known. Was it family lore which recalled, at some stage, that Lord Glenorchy had sat to Gainsborough? Usually, in pairs of portraits, a single artist is involved, hence an early attribution of both to the same painter. What explains the subsequent naming of Ramsay? There may have been some recollection that a Scottish artist was involved – her origins could have contributed to the choice of Read for Lady Glenorchy. In addition, in ‘North Britain’, a century or so since, everyone wanted ancestral portraits by Ramsay. This misattribution occurred although the pictures remained in the family^[34] and documents in the owners’ archives prove that Read represented Lady Glenorchy, with her mandolin in hand, and Gainsborough her husband. 

The picture of Lady Glenorchy is in oils. Read was particularly renowned for her pastels. This less frequently practised medium offered advantages: portraits ‘in crayons’ are quicker to realise than oil-paintings and therefore cheaper for the artist to produce; skin tones in particular are rendered very effectively. Read used the medium to portray several royal children including the sickly Louisa Anne (1749–1768) who died of tuberculosis and the feisty Caroline Matilda (1751–1775), Queen of Denmark, whose short life was marked by intrigue and ended by scarlet fever. There is a reference to the commission in the Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser on 5 February 1765: ‘their Royal Highnesses the Princess Louise and Princess Caroline are sitting to the celebrated Miss Read for their portraits in Crayons.’^[35] Both – charming – pictures are in the royal collections. Louisa Anne is in blue with her dog; Caroline Matilda in pink. The first record listed by the Royal Collections Trust locates the latter picture in the Queen’s Bedchamber at Buckingham Palace in 1790 and wrongly ascribes it to Cotes – whose name now figures on the frame, as it does on that of her sister’s likeness.^[36] Many of Read’s portraits have been attributed to him, and doubtless many still are. Though he predeceased her, his fame endured longer – possibly, in part at least, because he was a man – in addition, as he usually signed his works he has a known corpus from which to start. Here, the addition of the name at the base of the frame is discreet. It appears to constitute a form of cataloguing which gives it a slightly different status to the more boastful ‘Ramsay’ on the portrait of Lady Glenorchy but is another illustration of Read’s authorship being ignored. 

 

(Un)signed engravings

While we know where the portraits of the two royal princesses are currently to be found (though it is not possible to view one of them, which hangs in the private apartments in Windsor Castle), the whereabouts of many pictures by Read are unknown – including one of the Prince of Wales and Prince Frederick formerly in the State Bedroom of the Queen’s House at Frogmore.^[37] Its existence is confirmed by mezzotints.^[38] We might search for missing works by Read using engravings as our starting-point.^[39] Several caveats must be added. First, of course, a minority of her pictures were engraved, and so one could only aim to rediscover part of her corpus. There are plates without an artist’s name and which we know to be based on pictures by Read – eg, an anonymous print of Miss Trimmer which is far less refined than the James Watson mezzotint on which she is duly credited^[40] – and so there may be others; unsigned plates are frequently of poor quality, sometimes executed rapidly without the artist or sitter’s consent and, on occasion, after a reproduction rather than the original. In some cases, small print-runs mean there are few extant copies. Locating one and working backwards would be fraught with difficulty.

Where plates are ‘signed’, even during her lifetime, Read’s name is not always given in the same form, in particular, as on the earlier mentioned Finlayson engraving of the ‘Double Duchess’, or on that of the royal princes, the initial of her (full or abbreviated) forename often appears as ‘C’ (rather than K), suggesting she may not have exercised any control over such engravings. Finally, an artist’s ‘signature’ cannot guarantee that s/he was responsible for the original: according to Timothy Clayton, a mezzotint of Mrs Penelope Pitt ‘by Charles Corbutt after Katherine Read’ is actually a version of one by Richard Houston after Penelope Cawardine.^[41] An unscrupulous printer, to make a picture desirable, added inexact information including the name of a fashionable portraitist. This is unlikely to have been a frequent occurrence, but it does suggest that caution should be exercised when using engravings to reconstitute a corpus. 

A collateral effect of reducing Katherine Read’s name to ‘C. Read’ (or ‘K. Read’) is that it hides her sex. With more men than women artists, it is unsurprising that, on reading such an indication, people might not even think that the original author was female.^[42] An egregious example of this appears in a catalogue entry by artist Johann Gottfried Abraham Frenzel (1782–1855),^[43] the curator of the King of Saxony’s gallery. He attributes the model for ‘Jeune fille caressant un chat’, a proof engraving signed ‘C. Read pinx. J. Watson sc.’, doubtless the portrait of ‘Miss Trimmer’,^[44] to ‘READ (Charles.)’,^[45] creating a non-existent male artist.

Read is gaining visibility thanks to research on female artists – her work figured prominently in the 2024 exhibition curated by Tabitha Barber at the Tate Gallery, ‘Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520–1920’.^[46] Arguably, her gender, along with the subject-matter of many of her pictures (of which more below) contributed to her absence from the canon. A leading male art historian, commenting on a work identified as by her through a combination of documentary evidence and connoisseurship, wrote candidly: ‘I did slightly wonder if the painting wasn’t too good for Read,’ before accepting the attribution. The phrasing itself is interesting. ‘I thought it was a particularly good Read’ or even ‘the best I have seen by her’ would have done the same job of expressing admiration. It suggests that she has been pigeon-holed as a second-rate artist, even without most of her œuvre being known – and indeed probably in part because many of her works have been assigned to others.  

 

Absence of authorship and the art market

Though you cannot read Katherine Read’s name on her oils and pastels, prints based on her artworks sometimes include it. Engravings are signed because the direct link between artist and sitter or commissioner cannot necessarily be reconstructed. They are made to circulate and can have fluctuating exchange values. While it does not matter (except for insurance purposes) whether pictures in your drawing-room are (correctly) attributed or not, the art market dislikes anonymity. Signatures carry added worth. In 1745, Edme-François Gersaint spoke of the pressure to attribute pictures and the possible errors engendered: ‘Ne voyons-nous pas tous les jours ceux qui osent se donner pour des connoisseurs infaillibles, se tromper dans les jugemens qu’ils portent sur des Tableaux … les curieux veulent un nom d’Auteur à un Tableau qu’ils recherchent, quelque beau qu’il puisse être; ils ne sont pas satisfaits quand on ne leur désigne que l’Ecole de laquelle on peut le soupçonner.’^[47]

Often aspirational, naming has economic implications. Attributing a painting to Liotard or Mengs puts it in a higher price bracket than leaving it anonymous – or indeed than (accurately) naming Read as the artist. While, in certain cases, things appear to be shifting, traditionally, women’s pictures have sold for less than men’s.^[48] Market price reflects desirability.

Without a signature, identifications of artists usually rely on a mix of connoisseurship, tradition (eg, within the sitter’s family) and documentation (receipts, letters, etc). Different institutions and individuals give greater weight to types of evidence that do not constitute proof. In the absence of analyses which might serve not only to date a work of art and isolate precise technical tendencies, but also, for instance, to discover trace DNA, could one weigh up the relative value of such diverse elements on a standard basis, especially when they point to conflicting answers? Descendants might ascribe a portrait to Gainsborough while a trained eye will discern that the style is wrong. Other cases are much less clear. One of the ways of addressing the question of Read’s corpus could be to take another look at unsigned pictures attributed to the contemporary painters to whom works by her have been ascribed. We might then discover that a work catalogued as a Reynolds or a Romney is more likely to be a Read.^[49] We would also be able, down the line, to refine our knowledge of her style and its variety.

In the dining hall of All Souls College in Oxford, three massive portraits of University chancellors overlook high table. Their size, the place they occupy and the robes the men wear make them stand out – the heavy gold braid echoes the frames. Most fellows who use Hall regularly are incapable of naming the men or of setting the portraits in chronological order. Whether or not they are good likenesses is irrelevant: they aim to impress. This is an example of portraiture as canonisation (which gave and still gives artists fame), at the root of institutions such as the National Portrait Galleries in Edinburgh and London whose function has been to show the faces of the great, good and historically significant – essentially men, usually in representations which denote their importance, eg, through costume or accessories. Arguably we should make clearer distinctions, when discussing portraiture, regarding what the artist is actually seeking to represent: someone who occupies a position – with the trappings at least as important as the figure? An individual? A private person who will come across as having a social and not just a personal identity?

Even if painted for the same patron, a portrait of an infant at play is probably intended for a narrower audience than one of a man in uniform. In the former, likeness alone matters: it freezes the child in a transient moment. In the latter, ‘occupational’ (I use the term broadly) prompts help to identify the sitter, even for someone who has never met them. The actual likeness represents only a partial contribution to the identificatory elements and overall aim. One might distinguish inward and outward-facing portraits. The first seek to portray an individual for an intimate circle – such as a cherished infant for devoted parents – and often hang in private spaces; the second intend to broadcast something to a wider audience. Statement pictures, in which other outward signs like dress offer clues to sitters’ identities, are paradoxically the ones for which you are most likely to find an indication, on the frame or sometimes the picture itself, of both subject and painter. It is also more often possible to find a paper trail for an official commission than for a personal one.

Family portraits that seek to immortalise the individual – particularly a child – are not intended to enter the collection economy or the secondary market in the same way as Old Master paintings. If, in 18th-century Rome, you spent a certain amount on a portrait by Batoni of yourself, clutching a piece of sculpture, this did not compare to paying an identical sum for a copy of a Raphael or a Salvator Rosa for instance, although both pictures might hang in similar places in British country houses. The (copied) Raphael or Rosa’s resale value would not be impacted to the same degree by whether or not a subsequent purchaser knew the sitter.

Despite her original apparent interest in ‘one branch of history which consists of single figures’, as her mentor Peter Grant wrote in 1752,^[50] Read seems not very often to have represented mythological or religious subjects, unlike the much-admired Rosalba Carriera,^[51] and nor she did make fancy pictures of children^[52]. These, even when they show a specific individual, rather than an ideal head, lose less of their currency when the link with the original sitter is forgotten.

Read’s pictures – even of men – are not on the whole destined to dialogue with ancestral portraits. They tend to promote traditionally ‘feminine’ values of attachment and feelings (mothers embracing their babies, children with their pets), rather than ‘masculine’ values of power, authority and wealth. When unsigned works (by Read) come onto the market, auctioneers and art historians will consider the repertoire of artists they know before suggesting an attribution. They may look through a catalogue raisonné or two to seek stylistic analogies but cannot do so for Read, since there is none. As a result, they frequently plump for the wrong (male) name rather than hers. A vicious circle ensues.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Getty Provenance Index records just one case of a work by ‘Miss Reed’ [sic] auctioned during her lifetime: A Lady’s Portrait in Crayons went for £8 18s. 6d. as part of Charles Dillon’s sale in 1775.^[53] Seven pictures by Read were listed in five auctions between her death and the end of the 18th century. Then there is nothing until 1916. In the early 20th century, six references to sales (of only two pictures by Read) are logged. This suggests that her name must have ceased to be familiar to a wider public by the early 19th century. Alice Chevrier of Christie’s, observing, in 2021, before the Women in Art sale, that, generally speaking, women artists were ‘obviously less offered and less valued than male artists’, talked about a cycle the auction was trying to break: ‘If you don’t offer an artist because they are not valued, you will not offer them later.’^[54]

 

What next?

Another word for fame is renown. Its French version, ‘renommée’, gives a more discernible link to its etymology. It is by being re-named, in the sense of mentioned again and again, that one enjoys renown. Every time another painter is named in Read’s place this constitutes an erosion of the renown which should rightly be hers. Whilst it would not put her in the same league as Reynolds, for instance, whose career lasted some 15 years longer and whose institutional functions guaranteed him an exposure above and beyond his pictures, it would certainly make her works and story more familiar to a wider public. In the art world, renown is a synonym of attractivity for private and public collectors. Through the law of supply and demand, it impacts prices. An unsatisfactory picture like the Salvator Mundi attracted high bids (and considerable public interest) because of its attribution to Leonardo da Vinci. With a label like ‘Italian school’, it is safe to say that it would have remained largely unnoticed.

Read is of course far from alone in being deprived of the authorship of many of her works in favour of (generally) better-known painters. The fortune of such artists is an illustration of the French saying ‘on ne prête qu’aux riches’ (‘you only lend to the rich’). What should museums and galleries do when an earlier identification is revealed as inaccurate? Should all trace of it be deleted, like the erroneous ‘Mengs pinx^t covered up on the Mackenzie double portrait? Would it be right for the McManus to remove Ramsay’s name from the frame surrounding Lady Glenorchy’s likeness and to replace it with Katherine Read’s?^[55] Ditto with the Royal Collection’s reference to Francis Cotes? Or should these traces of historical misattributions remain as witnesses to reception history? Exhibition labels, as in the McManus, are used to correct inexact listings (usually without mentioning the error). In addition, they are read by far fewer people than actually look at the pictures. The casual visitor may be struck by the fine portrait of Willielma Glenorchy, read Ramsay’s name on the frame, and stroll off, unaware of the actual artist and of the injustice done to Read.

 

 

12 British Gentlemen in Rome, by Katherine Read (1723–1778), 1751. Oil on canvas, 94.6 x 134.6 cm.
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, USA

 

 

Consider another case and the way it is handled. One of the few oil paintings by Read currently exhibited under her name in a public collection (the Yale Center for British Art), is presented in the following manner (Pl 12):

British Gentlemen in Rome
ca. 1750

Read staged this group portrait in what is unmistakably Rome, with the Colosseum and Arch of Constantine in the background. The setting indicates that these young men are on the Grand Tour, a journey through Europe that exposed the sons of the British elite to the art of antiquity and the Renaissance. The Tour was considered a rite of passage, one that concluded their education and cultivated their artistic taste.

Although not necessarily from families of means, young artists such as Read also went to Rome to study classical art and establish their reputations. Among the Grand Tourists Read met there was the young politician-to-be Sir Charles Turner, who commissioned this work and is depicted, hand on hip, at the center of the painting. It was rare in this period for a woman artist to paint men, which is one reason that this work was not attributed to Read until 2006.^[56]

If you scroll down the page of the online catalogue, to the text block regarding the ‘creator’, after Read’s name, you are supplied with additional details: the former attributions (to James Russel, David Allan and Nathaniel Dance). The information regarding the earlier misattribution(s) on the Gallery label is a little ambiguous and acknowledges its own incompleteness (‘one reason’, implicitly among several). It is however significant to be told that the picture was only catalogued as by Read from 2006. The text rights the wrong (by giving the artist’s name) but maintains the memory – in the same way as a scar denotes healing but does not erase the wound. It helps us to think about ways of addressing such errors.

Going beyond the single case of Katherine Read, might not the art world agree to some convention, like a specific colour that could stand out, eg, yellow, or an agreed logo – think of the now familiar wheat stalk used to indicate the presence of gluten in food – to distinguish exhibition labels which correct a mistake, particularly if it relates to systematic failures to recognise an artist (for instance because of her sex)? Were a consortium of museums to undertake to introduce such corrections in a uniform manner then a new standard in cataloguing, and in the public presentation of data, might emerge, and it would doubtless enrich our experience and invite further reflections on questions of attribution and canonisation.

 

 

 

 

1. Much of the preparatory work for this article was carried out when I was lucky enough to be a Senior Anniversary Fellow at IASH in Edinburgh and a History Fellow at the Bogliasco Foundation. My thanks to the administrators and my fellow researchers at both institutions as well as to Viccy Coltman, James Holloway, Duncan Thomson and the staff of the National Library of Scotland. I would also like to extend my gratitude to Neil Jeffares and Susan Seth for comments on an early draft of these reflections. Thank you for help with iconographical matters to Lili Bartholomew, Chloé Berthenet, Andrew McKenzie.There is no catalogue raisonné of Katherine Read’s work. Neil Jeffares’ article ‘Read, Katherine’ in Pastellists.com is a vital resource for her work in crayons. http://www.pastellists.com/Articles/Read.pdf (accessed 2 December 25). Pastels are referred to according to Jeffares’ numbering system (J. followed by a series of digits). ↑
2. Andrew Lumisden to Robert Strange, 3 August 1751. Letterbook of Andrew Lumisden, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, Acc. 11328. ↑
3. See the notice in the Gazeteer and new daily Advertiser of 31 July 1764 quoted by Neil Jeffares (‘Read, Katherine’, p1). – Read’s name is sometimes misspelled (variants include Reed/Reid/Rid/Ridge as well as Catherine, Katharine or even Caterina.) ↑
4. Since this article was written, the BBC has filmed an episode of its popular ‘Fake or Fortune’ series due to be released in the summer of 2026 and dedicated to a late work attributed to Katherine Read. ↑
5. Thanks to Richard Torrance who kindly provided a transcription of the letters (whereabouts unknown) which Katherine Read and Peter Grant sent to the artist’s brother, Alexander Read. Quoted hereafter as RT, followed by the date. RT 6 January 1752. ↑
6. Certain painters added their signature to a design feature within their pictures – Pompeo Batoni’s portrait of George Gordon, Lord Haddo, is signed on the base of a column. In Read’s portrait of Simon and Etheldred Yorke, lettering on the dog’s collar spells out the client’s name, not the artist’s. She was clearly interested in portraying her sitter rather than leaving her name as her mark. – On artists’ signatures see Charlotte Guichard, La Griffe du peintre, Paris 2018. ↑
7. Eg, the 1768 letter in the Royal Academy Archives (SA/34/26). ↑
8. Private communication 29/09/23. ↑
9. Katherine Read to her brother Alexander Read, from Rome, RT 16 June 1751. ↑
10. A blogpost to mark Christie’s first ever auction of women artists (Sign of the times: 5 women artists who challenged traditions, 9 June 2021) deals with very different cases: ‘One way that female artists fought against forms of oppression was to use their signature in a somewhat political way. By branding their work with their full names or by playing with the form of their signature, artists were able to mark their individuality – and these five women painters [Louise Moillon, Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, Louise Bourgeois, Yayoi Kusama] did just that.’ https://www.christies.com/en/stories/5-women-artists-who-challenged-traditions-ed993eb5a6ba43e6a461ad37ef15c496 accessed 4 December 2025.↑
11. See for instance J.612.551 ‘Lady in a white dress with pink ribbon and pearls in hair’ in which the unknown sitter appears to be a young woman of means thanks to her pearls and the diamond brooches on the white sleeves of her fine lace-trimmed dress. ↑
12. Kielmansegge, Frederick, Diary of a Journey to England 1761–2, translated by Philippa Kielmansegg [sic], London, New York and Bombay, 1902, p246. ↑
13. Correspondence of Emily, Duchess of Leinster, ed Brian Fitzgerald, 3 vols, Dublin 1949, 1953, 1957, I, p121. The Marquess of Kildare was created Duke of Leinster in 1766. The untraced picture is J.612.34 in Neil Jeffares’ list. ↑
14. J.612.401 [olim J.612.496]. Paris, Drouot, l’Huillier, 11 juin 2021, lot 10. Online cat. Subsequently advertised (correctly attributed) in Galerie de Bayser, cat. 2022. ↑
15. RT 6 January 1752. ↑
16. Just as this article was going to press, I discovered that the Polish connection (Porta was gentleman of the bedchamber to the king of Poland) has led the Royal Castle in Warsaw to purchase this work for its collection. It will very soon be one of the few pictures by Read on show in a public museum. Curator Marta Zdańkowska’s catalogue entry for the exhibition of new acquisitions (Marta Zdańkowska, Nowe rysunki, dawne wybory. Kontynuacja kolekcjonerskiej wizji Andrzeja Ciechanowieckiego, w: katalog wystawy o nabytkach Fundacji Zbiorów im. Ciechanowieckich po 2015 r., red. Magdalena Białonowska, Warszawa 2026) is in press. The pastel’s inventory number will be: Inv. FC-ZKW/1979 The Ciechanowiecki Foundation at the Royal Castle in Warsaw. My thanks to Marta Zdańkowska for the information. ↑
17. J.612.114. ↑
18. On the addition of (often aspirational) labels, see Kate Retford, ‘Patrilineal Portraiture? Gender and Genealogy in the Eighteenth-Century English Country House’, in John Styles and Amanda Vickery, eds, Gender, Taste, and Material Culture in Britain and North America 1700–1830, New Haven and London 2006, pp315–344, here p329–30: ‘Such adornment [names and dates added in 1748 to existing family portraits] was intended to assert ownership and status, to ensure that no confusion could arise over the identities of the sitters in the future, and to convey biographical information to the spectators. The inscriptions also provided a certain visual unity, both in their uniform yellow script and in their repetitive phrasing, in an otherwise rather disparate and motley collection of images.’ Retford adds (p331): ‘Such ancestral portraits were not primarily seen as works of art, having aesthetic value. Instead, they were predominantly biographical documents, objects whose value lay in their signification to such a degree that their material form could be treated with minimal respect.’ Noting specific mistakes, Retford observes: ‘While these particular errors are likely to have been accidental, it seems reasonable to suggest that on other occasions … , the mistakes may have something more wilful about them.’ ↑
19. J.612.197 – I am basing myself on photographs, having not seen the originals. ↑
20. Eg, a pastel in the Royal Collections Trust (RCIN 404655) or an oil copy by Rebecca Dulcibella Orpen (1830-1923) held by the National Trust at Baddesley Clinton, Warwickshire (accession number: 343143). ↑
21. See Lot 152 Halls (Shrewsbury) Auction 18 June 2025 https://fineart.hallsgb.com/auction/lot/lot-152—a-minton-portrait-charger-of-elizabeth-gunning-by-e-broughton-dated-1875/?lot=168480&sd=1. Inverary Castle recently acquired this charger for its collections. Information supplied by Alison Diamond (private communication 16 December 2025). ↑
22. The full text specific to the verso of no. 13 in the series of 25 ‘Bygone Beauties’ reads: ‘ELIZABETH GUNNING by Catherine Read./ One of the famous Gunning sisters, who created so great a sensation on their appearance in London. Born in 1734, Elizabeth married first, in 1752, the sixth Duke of Hamilton, and secondly, in 1759, Colonel John Campbell, afterwards fifth Duke of Argyll. She represented the most bewitching type of Irish beauty. The portrait is by Catherine Read, who from 1760 to her death in 1778 was a very fashionable painter, particularly of children and society ladies.’ ↑
23. See Catriona Seth, ‘I am only here as a learner’: Katherine Read in Italy (1750–3)’, Burlington Magazine, CLXVIII (January 2026), pp34–43. ↑
24. See Sotheby’s catalogue for the 16 November 1988 sale, p53 – under the indication ‘The Property of a Lady/ 40 Nathaniel Hone, R.A. (1718–1784)’, (copy available online: https://www.grandtour.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Detail/fortrose-kenneth-mackenzie-lord/22280747?item=22280758 accessed 2 December 2025). ↑
25. Joshua Reynolds, DISCOURSE XIV. Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy, on the Distribution of the Prizes, December 10, 1788. ↑
26. Read and Reynolds were near neighbours in Rome and the same age. While in Italy they were both involved in painting Charlemont and his friends and, as scholarship has shown, Reynolds’s Parody of the School of Athens has some connection with a group portrait by Read. See Margery Morgan, ‘British Connoisseurs in Rome: Was it painted by Katherine Read (1723-78)?’, The British Art Journal, VII, 1 (Spring/Summer 2006), pp40–44. Reynolds was dismissive both of women artists and of media other than oil (especially pastel). ↑
27. This is an implicit invitation to be wary of identifications of artists from purely visual cues, particularly bearing in mind that painters whose career stretches over a long period – in Read’s case some 30 years – might see their style evolve, although that was not the issue here. ↑
28. RT 17 June 1752. Bonham’s expert Andrew McKenzie came to the same conclusion as Margery Morgan separately: ‘[The] portrait of Lord Fortrose and Dr Mackenzie had previously been attributed to Nathaniel Hone when it was sold at Christie’s by the Berkeley family in the late 1980s at the same time as a number of other paintings commissioned by the last Earl when he was in Naples. Having read Dr James’s extensive correspondence I was able to identify him as the tutor in the portrait and then after last year reading a reference in Tony Scotland’s recent biography of the last Earl that he was painted by [K]atherine Read in Rome I followed that up by looking at Neil Jeffares’ Dictionary of Pastellists in which he quotes a letter of 17 June 1752 by Katherine Read’s guardian, the Abbé Peter Grant to her brother, which refers to Dr. Mackenzie who is governor to my Lord Fortrose’s son whose portrait she has done along with that of his young friend on the same cloath’ (Private correspondence by email, 2023). – Neil Jeffares identified the pastel portrait of Dr James Mackenzie (J.612.355), offered for sale on the American market in 2021 as anonymous, and clearly by the same hand. ↑
29. Thanks to Kirsty Matheson (McManus, Dundee) for sending a transcript of the inscription. ↑
30. ‘John Lord Glenorchy/ Ano. 1762 married Ano. 1761/ Willelma Maxwell daughter/ & Co-heiress of Willm. Maxwell/ of Preston in the Stewartry/ of Kirkcudbright Esqr.’ See the presentation of Lot 27 of the Lyon & Turnbull sale, Property of the Earls of Breadalbane & Holland, Taymouth Castle, 18 May 2021. On Lord Glenorchy’s portrait, see Hugh Belsey, Thomas Gainsborough: The Portraits, Fancy Pictures and Copies after Old Masters, New Haven and London 2019, vol I, pp396–97. ↑
31. Catalogues of Painted Portraits in many of the capital Mansion houses of Scotland ranged Alphabetically without regarding the Counties, British Library MS 6392 fol 109/113. ↑
32. File on Katherine Read, McManus museum, Dundee. Accessed on 25 July 2023. With my gratitude to Susan Keracher and to Anna Robertson, and additional thanks to Kirsty Matheson for locating the source of the Taymouth Castle inventory entry (Christie, Manson & Woods, 1852). There is an error in the inventory not only in the attribution of the picture but also in the name given to the musical instrument. Thanks to Elizabeth Kenny for confirming that it looks like a mandolin, rather than a guitar. ↑
33. See https://www.lyonandturnbull.com/news/article/thomas-gainsborough/ accessed 1 August 2023. When Gainsborough painted the half-length portrait of Lord Glenorchy, he received a total of £42 plus 7 shillings for the packing case. The second payment, after completion of the work, was £21.7s. for which the family retains a receipt dated 13 April 1763 (as was usual, the first half of the cost of the painting, viz £21, would have been paid in advance). The final payment to Katherine Read for Lady Glenorchy’s picture was for a sum of £24.4s as a receipt dated 22 April 1763 records. ↑
34. See the indication of provenance on The Art Fund’s website: ‘The portrait has always been owned by the Glenorchy family. The painting hung in Taymouth Castle, Perth and Kinross and from there it has passed through the family by direct descent.’ (https://www.artfund.org/supporting-museums/art-weve-helped-buy/artwork/14146/portrait-of-willielma-campbell-nee-maxwell-lady-glenorchy-1741-1786 accessed 1 August 2023). ↑
35. Quoted by Jeffares in ‘Read, Katherine’, p1. ↑
36. https://www.rct.uk/collection/400904/princess-caroline-matilda-1751-1775. Accessed 2 December 2025. The portrait of Louisa Anne appears to have been separated from that of her sister early on: the Royal records locate it in Carlton House in 1816 https://www.rct.uk/collection/400905/princess-louisa-anne-1749-1768 accessed 2 December 2025. Thank you to Martin Clayton and his team for checking the frame of Louisa Anne’s portrait which currently hangs in an inaccessible part of the castle. ↑
37. Jeffares lists the portrait as J.612.274 and quotes William Henry Pyne, The History of the Royal Residences, 1819, p20 as his source for the localisation. ↑
38. Lettering according to the Wellcome Collection (Reference: 570384i): ‘His Royal Highness George Prince of Wales & Prince Frederick. C. Read pinxt.; J. Watson fecit.’ See https://wellcomecollection.org/works/ab5ux5yb accessed 2 December 2025 – The British Museum owns a copy of another less fine version ‘Probably copied from the mezzotint in the same direction by James Watson (Chaloner Smith 149)’ according to the website. https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_2010-7081-3738 accessed 2 December 2025. ↑
39. To give another example, Read portrayed Fortrose’s second wife, Harriet (or Harriot) Powell, a celebrated beauty of the time. While the whereabouts of the portrait are unknown, there are mezzotints by Richard Houston, published by Robert Sayer after Read. See, eg, the National Portrait Gallery (hereafter NPG) copy D40622. ↑
40. Miss Trimmer, mezzotint (c1750–75), 15.4 x 11.5 cm plate size; 16.7 x 12.7 cm. National Portrait Gallery, NPG D15272. ↑
41. Timothy Clayton, ‘A Spurious Charlotte Exposed’, Print Quarterly, vol 25, no. 3 (September 2008), pp254–67, especially p265 and fig. 113, p259. Penelope Cawardine (1729–1804) usually painted miniatures. She may have provided an original at the start of the process or have worked from a larger portrait by another artist. During her career, she could have been called upon to supply reduced format copies of pictures by Read. ↑
42. Studies consistently show that authors whose names appear female are less successful and enjoy a less diverse readership than those who are or might be men. Cases such as historian CV Wedgwood or novelists AS Byatt, PD James or JK Rowling suggest ways of foiling the initial reticence of readers implicitly by inviting them not to think that the author is a woman. ↑
43. See the entry on the Royal Academy website: https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/name/johann-gottfried-abraham-frenzel accessed 2 December 2025. ↑
44. See, eg, the NPG copy which is duly captioned: https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw200127/Miss-Trimmer accessed 2 December 2025. ↑
45. Catalogue raisonné des estampes du cabinet de feu Madame la comtesse d’Einsiedel de Reibersdorf. Les écoles allemande, française et anglaise, les portraits et ouvrages entier, dont la vente publique se fera à Dresde le 20. Janvier 1834 chez C.E. Heinrich, etc., Dresde, 1833, vol II, p383. There was a minor landscape artist and engraver active in the first half of the 19th century called David Charles Read but this is unlikely to be the reason for Frenzel’s erroneous attribution. ↑
46. The attribution of a poor 18th-century pastel portrait of ‘A young lady wearing a white dress and blue fur’ to ‘Circle of Katherine Read’ in a sale of ‘The contents of The Grange, Wendover’ by Woolley & Wallis (Salisbury) on 2 October 2024 illustrates a form of recently (re-)acquired desirability. ↑
47. ‘Don’t we see every day those who claim to be infallible connoisseurs making mistakes in their judgments of pictures … interested parties want an author’s name for a picture they seek out, however beautiful it might be; they are not satisfied when they are only given the School to which it appears to belong.’ Edme-François Gersaint, Catalogue raisonné des differens effets curieux et rares contenus dans le cabinet de feu M. le chevalier de La Roque, Paris 1745, p27. ↑
48. Mary Ann Sieghart, ‘“Mind-blowing”: Why do men’s paintings cost 10 times more than women’s?’, The Guardian, 7 August 2022. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/aug/02/painting-gender-pay-gap-recalculating-art accessed 2 December 2025. At Sotheby’s 7 July 2022 sale of Old Masters, there were only two works attributed to female painters: Margaret Sarah Carpenter (a signed and dated 1841 oil painting of a mother and child) and Katherine Read (an unsigned portrait in oils of Charles Wedderburn with provenance from the artist and sitter’s family). In a sluggish sale, with just over half of the items offered actually purchased (and, for these, with over half of the winning bids either at the lowest level of the estimate or – when this was lower – at the opening price), both these pictures found takers. They were among the lots sold at the lowest estimate (which was probably also, in their cases, the amount requested for the opening bid). Although their rarity might have made them desirable, I would like to think that, at least in Read’s case, it was the quality of the picture which made it attractive. At Bonham’s in 2023, five oils by Read of members of her sister Jean’s family, the Beatsons, far exceeded their curiously low estimates of £1000–£1500, attracting bids ranging from over £3000 (a damaged portrait of Jean Read née Beatson) to nearly £9000.↑
49. This is something which Adam Busiakiewicz appears to have started to undertake recently basing himself on questions of connoisseurship if his X/Twitter and Instagram feeds are to be believed. See also https://artherstory.net/finding-catherine-read/ accessed on 23 December 2025 (with thanks to Stephen Lloyd for pointing out the blogpost). In addition, The Burlington Magazine, CLXVII (2025), pp1012–15, includes an article by Edward Corp titled ‘A recently identified Scottish portrait of Bonnie Prince Charlie by Katherine Read’, which puts forward circumstantial evidence and perceived stylistic similarities to defend the attribution of three Stuart pictures to Read. ↑
50. RT, letter from Peter Grant to Alexander Read, 11 January 1752. ↑
51. See the list in Neil Jeffares’ database: http://www.pastellists.com/Articles/Carriera2.pdf. Accessed on 4 December 2025. ↑
52. Possibly the closest things to this sort of picture which Read is known to have painted are portraits like that of Lady Sarah Lennox (married names: Bunbury and Napier) as Almeria in Congreve’s The Mourning Bride. See J.612.37, J.612.373 and J.612.3732. On fancy pictures, see Martin Postle’s classic Angels and Urchins. The Fancy Picture in 18th-Century British Art, Kenwood and Nottingham 1998. ↑
53. We don’t know who the lady in question might have been. The portrait may well have represented a family member or a close friend, immediately recognisable for the late owner. ↑
54. Quoted in https://www.christies.com/en/stories/5-women-artists-who-challenged-traditions-ed993eb5a6ba43e6a461ad37ef15c496 Accessed 4 December 2025. ↑
55. ‘We have left the label on the frame to show just how easy it is for the work of women artists to be reattributed to men.’ Anna Robertson, Fine and Applied Art Manager, The McManus, Dundee (private communication by email 11 December 2025). ↑
56. Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2025. See https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:767. accessed on 10 December 2025. On the reattribution, see Morgan, ‘British Connoisseurs in Rome’ (quoted at n26). ↑