Currently not on view
Barbara St. John Bletsoe, Countess of Coventry
Angelica Kauffmann, 1741–1807; born Chur, Switzerland; died Rome, Italy; active London, England
1998-285
The second wife of the Earl of Coventry, who was born Barbara St. John Bletsoe, is shown as an aristocrat dressed in fine muslin embroidered with gold thread and wearing a golden pin with a ruby and dangling pearls. Although she is pensive and at rest, the Countess has beside her on the table a large shuttle that attests to her industry and skill in fancy work. The instrument was used to make knotted lace, a forerunner of the tatted lace made with smaller shuttles by nineteenth- and twentieth-century ladies.
Information
Title
Barbara St. John Bletsoe, Countess of Coventry
Maker
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
130.8 × 119.3 cm (51 1/2 × 46 15/16 in.)
frame: 129.7 × 117.3 × 7.6 cm (51 1/16 × 46 3/16 × 3 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of Teri Noel Towe, Class of 1970, in grateful and loving memory of his father and mother, Kenneth Crawford Towe and Betty McCarn Towe
Object Number
1998-285
Place Made
Europe, Switzerland
Culture
Type
Subject
Teri Noel Towe; 1998 gift to Princeton University Art Museum.
- Jill Guthrie, ed., In celebration: works of art from the Collections of Princeton Alumni and Friends of The Art Museum, Princeton University, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 1997)., p. 209, cat. no. 202 (illus.)
- "Acquisitions of the Art Museum 1998," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 58, no. 1/2 (1999): p. 86-123., p. 97
