The Prince of Wales commissioned this portrait after his break-up with Mary. It hung in his gallery at Carlton House and is now in the Wallace Collection.

Bass indicates that this painting was in Mary's possession and sold as part of an auction of her possessions to pay her creditors in 1785. However, according to Mary's modern biographer, Paula Byrne, it wasn't this portrait she owned, but another "bust-length close-up." This smaller portrait was a "treasured possession, she kept it in pride of place on her wall, flanked by engravings of the Prince and Banastre Tarleton, until 1785, when her financial affairs became so hopeless that her possessions were auctioned off. It fetched thirty-two guineas and has now found its way to the Rothschild collection at Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire."¹

Notes:

¹ Paula Byrne, Perdita: The Life of Mary Robinson, (UK: Harper Collins Publishers, 2004), p169. [ back ]