Portrait of Amelia and Harriet Harding-Newman of Nelmes, Essex at their Music Lesson

Anna Tonelli (c.1763-1846)
Portrait of Amelia and Harriet Harding-Newman of Nelmes, Essex at their Music Lesson

Inscribed on an old label attached to the backboard: Amelia and Harriet Harding-Newman … Grandaughter of Richard Harding
Pastel on paper
Oval 44 by 49 cm., 17 ½ by 19 ½ in.

Provenance:
Dr W.R. Schweizer:
Anonymous sale, Sotheby's, 4th November 1964, lot 44 as H.D. Hamilton;
By descent to the present owner

This pastel has recently been re-attributed to Anna Tonelli, an Italian artist who specialised in miniatures and pastel portraits, whose work has often been mistaken for her likely teacher Hugh Douglas Hamilton (1740-1808). For more on Tonelli see the note to no.58.

Amelia (1784-1864) on the left, and Harriett (1782-1837) were the children of Richard Harding (1757-1808) and Harriett Schutz (1759-1791) who married at St. James's Piccadilly in 1776. Their father was the sitter in George Romney's Pink Boy (which was sold at Christie's in 2014) who had inherited the Manor of Romford, Essex in 1766 from his maternal grandfather, Richard Newman. As Harding he acquired Nelmes in 1781 and took the Newman surname in 1783 by Act of Parliament to become Richard Harding Newman. The family lived at Nelmes Manor, Hornchurch, Essex. Neither Amelia nor Harriett ever married.

We are grateful to Neil Jeffares for the attribution of this work to Tonelli.