Miss Mary Edwards

In the England of 1742, a married woman's fortune passed into her husband's control. Mary Edwards, about 37 and one of the richest women in the country, had already stepped out of that arrangement. Years earlier she had married Lord Anne Hamilton in secret, and when he began spending her money she repudiated the marriage and went back to calling herself a single woman, even though that left their young son illegitimate. Hogarth was her friend, and through that decade perhaps his most important patron. He paints her in diamonds and a red dress beside a globe, with an open scroll on the table that speaks up for liberty and property. The two busts on the wall are often read as Queen Elizabeth I and King Alfred, though no one can say for certain. She died the following summer, in August 1743.