Henrietta Maxwell , She brought into the Daly family a portrait of her grandmother, Mrs Richard Cantillon, by Largilliáere, the French artist, who had painted portraits of Charles II, James II, Charles Edward Stuart (in our National Portrait Gallery) and Cardinal Henry Stuart. The canvas is about 3 ft. 6 in. by 4 ft. 6 in., and is labelled Mary de Mahony (Madame de Cantillon). Writing to her sister, the Countess of Mar, in 1723, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu says, "If you please to send my nightgown to Mr Hughes, an English banquier at Paris, directed for Madame Cantillon, it will come safe to my hands; she is a new neighbour of mine, has a very handsome house in the village [? Asniáeres] and herself eclipses most of our London beauties; you know how fond we are of novelty, besides that she is really very pretty and does not want understanding, and I have a thousand commodities in her acquaintance."*41 The recently published Letters of Montesquieu show that he was among her admirers. She appears to have spent most of her life before and after marriage in France. H.I.23 Another portrait which Lady Henrietta Maxwell brought with her to Dunsandle is of Cantillon's daughter and heiress. This is by Allan Ramsay and is labelled Henrietta Diana, Countess of Stafford 1757. The canvas measures 2 ft. 5 in. by 3 ft. and represents the Countess in her twenty-ninth year, with powdered hair. Horace Walpole refers to her in his letters to Sir Horace Mann. On 25 April 1743 he says: "Lord Stafford is come over [to Paris] to marry Miss Cantillon, a vast fortune, of his own [Protestant] religion.... She is as ugly as he; but when she comes to Paris and wears a great deal of rouge, and a separate apartment, who knows but she may be a beauty!"*42 His forecast seems to have been justified, as, describing a fãete at Ranelagh, he writes (3 May 1749) that "Miss Evelyn, Miss Bishop, Lady Stafford, and Mrs Pitt, were in vast beauty."*43 Walpole considered that Allan Ramsay excelled Reynolds as a painter of women.
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