Lady Elizabeth Foster

In 1787 Elizabeth Foster had left her husband, had almost no money of her own, and was living as the close companion of both the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire. Much of that decade she spent abroad, partly so that a daughter fathered by the Duke could be born in Italy, away from London talk. Reynolds, 64 that summer and president of the Royal Academy, shows her half length in white with a blue sash and a stretch of landscape behind. In August a stipple engraving after the portrait, by Francesco Bartolozzi, went on sale in London, so her face was in print-shop windows while the child stayed a secret. Edward Gibbon, the historian, who knew her well, said that no man could withstand her. She married the Duke in 1809, and the picture is still at Chatsworth.