This dramatic painting is a rarity for being one of the few 18th- century copies signed by the artist. That it is by the otherwise little-known painter Mary Hotchkis, and reproducing the work of another woman, makes it all the more remarkable.
Hotchkis appears to have been self- taught, possibly with the help of Stephen Slaughter (1697–1765), an artist and Surveyor of the King’s Pictures who painted a descendant of the Mordaunts in 1744. Her copy of Vertumnus and Pomona must have been completed before Hotchkis married Thomas Grace in December 1744, as thereafter she exhibited under her married name.
Along with artists such as Maria Cosway (1760–1838), Hotchkis was viewed by contemporaries as an exemplar of female professional independence. In 1762 she exhibited several works with the Incorporated Society of Artists, including what may be the self-portrait illustrated here (above left).
Elizabeth is probably depicted with her soon-to-be husband, John, Viscount Mordaunt. Vertumnus and Pomona were Roman deities of the seasons, trees and fruit of the orchard. According to Ovid, Vertumnus disguised himself as an old woman in order to infiltrate the garden of his beloved Pomona and woo her. The painting is unusual in depicting the moment at which a desperate Vertumnus drops his disguise and reaches for the startled goddess, who has previously rejected his advances. Pomona is shown as if about to flee, her fruit basket dropped in surprise. In Ovid’s version, her heart is finally captured by her youthful suitor.
The Mordaunts were staunch Royalists and at the heart of a spy ring known as the Great Trust, Elizabeth passing messages directly between her husband and the future King Charles II. Elizabeth probably sat for Princess Louise in The Hague. Both the original painting and Hotchkis’s copy descended through the families of Elizabeth Carey’s daughters.
Elizabeth Ratcliffe (c.1735–c.1810)
In the State Bedroom at Erddig a delicate bunch of roses, pinks, carnations and violas (opposite) has drawn admiration for almost 250 years, in spite of the caterpillar crawling up one of the stems. It is just one of many remarkable creations by Elizabeth (Betty) Ratcliffe, lady’s maid.
Ratcliffe occupied an unusual and privileged position, as her employers encouraged (and benefited from) her creativity. Her work was cherished and valued by the Yorke family – specially commissioned stands display and protect her wonderful models of a pagoda and the Ruins of the Temple of the Sun at Palmyra. Ratcliffe had access to high-quality materials and, perhaps most importantly, the time granted to her to create work. When requested to draw a copy of a print for the writer and antiquarian Thomas Pennant, she was able to ask Philip Yorke, head of her household, for a necessary ‘sheet of the finest grain’d white Vellum’. A letter suggests the commission was negotiated through Yorke’s wife, Dorothy, after Pennant had ‘beg’d of Mamma’ to let Ratcliffe undertake the work.
