ROMANTIC MATCH

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 26, 30 July 1937, Page 18

ROMANTIC MATCH

RECALLED BY PORTRAIT

The romantic marriage of a widowed countess to a .Royal duke —which caused George Ill's Ministers to bring about the Royal Marriage Act—will he recalled at Christie's when a Beechey portrait will be offered of that fascinating beauty, Maria, Duchess of Gloucester, said the "Daily Telegraph" recently. She was one of the daughters of Sir Robert Walpole's son F.dward, always known, in Rome and Paris as "the handsome Englishman," and of Mary Clement, a pretty Pall Mall sempstress.

Inheriting to the full the good looks of her parents, she dazzled the town with her beauty,, and the second Earl Waldegrave, Keeper of the Privy Purse to the Prince of Wales, married her \\\ 1759.

As the widowed Countess Waldsgr.ave, Maria Walpole was held to be the regnant beauty of her day. No wonder, then, that William Henry, Duke of Gloucester, brother of George 111, sought and resought her hand. There was already a long tram of rejected suitors, with the Duke of Portland at their head. At last Mann accepted the Duke of Gloucester, and the pair were secretly married in 1766. Although this union soon became an open Court secret, Maria was still known as the Countess Waldegrave.

In 1772, when the Royal Marriage Act was passed, Gainsborough had sent one of his portraits of her to the Royal Academy, but Sir Joshua Reynolds, fearing the displeasure of the King, advised the Academy Council to reject it.

But the marriage had to be recognised, as Maria -.vas now the mother of Prince William Frederick and of Princess Sophia Matilda. The young prince eventually married his cousin the Princess Mary, and all the famous Royal portraits which Gainsborough and others had painted passed to the Duke of Cambridge.

The dispersal of them in 1904 caused a furore at auction, and the superb half-length by Gainsborough of Maria Walpole, Duchess of Gloucester, in realising 12,100 guineas, surpassed all previous Gainsborough records.