Anna Seward

Tilly Kettle

1762

Oil on canvas

29 in. x 24 1/2 in. (737 mm x 622 mm)

Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery (NPG 2017) Purchased, 1924.

“The picture by Kettle, reproduced as a frontispiece for Volume I of her Letters, was painted, so the inscription reads, in 1762. She says that she was nineteen at the time. As we have noted, she spoke disparagingly of it, and it does appear heavy and lumpish beside the more animated portrait by Romney. The Kettle portrait was sold at Christie's in 1924, with other pictures which had been owned by the late Sir Robert White-Thomson, a relative of Miss Seward's on her mother's side” (167).

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