Ethel Mortlock - 'Town' - Marie Adelaide Brassey (Marchioness of Willingdon)

Miss Ethel Mortlock an Oil on Canvas called 'Town' of Marie Adelaide Brassey (aged 3) who became Marchioness of Willingdon (see below) and is buried in the Nave at Westminster Abbey, signed and dated 1878. 60 x 45 cm Oil

Ethel Mortlock (1865-1928) an extraordinary woman and sought after portrait painter. Born in Cambridge and lived in London. She exhibited at The Royal Academy between years 1878-1893 no less than 29 paintings also at the Grosvenor Galleries. Many of Paintings in museums (See History below and her sitters).

Marie Adelaide Brassey - Marie Adelaide Freeman-Thomas, Marchioness of Willingdon, GBE, CI DStJ (née Brassey; 24 March 1875 – 30 January 1960) was a daughter of Thomas Brassey, 1st Earl Brassey. On 20 July 1892, she married Freeman Thomas , 1st Marquess of Willingdon (12 September 1866 – 12 August 1941), the future Governor General of Canada and Viceroy of India. She became : Invested as an Imperial Order of the Crown of India (C.I.) in 1917, Decorated with the Kaisar-i-Hind Gold Medal , Invested as a Dame of Justice, Venerable Order of St John (D.J.St. J.),Decorated with the Order of Mercy. Invested as a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in December 1917. Invested as a Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE) in the 1924 Birthday Honours. Marie Canyon on the Cowichan River, Vancouver Island is named for her, commemorating a 1930 canoe trip from Cowichan Lake down that river to the city of Duncan, British Columbia. The Lady Willingdon Hospitol in Lahore, Pakistan is named after her .The Lady Willingdon Hospital in Manali, Himachal Pradesh, India, is named after her.

About Ethel Mortlock : Her clientèle of sitters included members of the aristocracy and European nobility and included, by her account, the Shah of Persia (1900) and the ‘Chinese Ambassador’, Li Hung Chang (who was actually the Chinese Viceroy), à propos which sitting the Sketch published an illustrated interview with Ethel in August 1896. Ethel was thought pretty grand by the American papers who reported that Chang had to go to her studio for sittings in 1896 rather than she wait upon him. Her portrait of the albino-complexioned Robert Lowe, 1st (and only) Viscount Sherbrooke, held by Nottingham Castle Museum, was executed in 1878 when Ethel was later said to have been only 16 – evidence of a remarkable talent if this were true, particularly as the painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy and in 1880 at the Walker gallery in Liverpool [see the Liverpool Mercury, 5.10.1880]. Sherbrooke himself left the painting to his wife and then to the Council of the University of London but there was some dispute over this legacy [Pall Mall Gazette, 6.10.92]. Not only did she achieve exhibition at the R.A., sometimes her work was singled out for comment by The Times.A portrait of the 2nd Duke of Wellington hangs in Gloversville public library NY, probably commissioned by his friend, the library’s founder Elder Levi Parsons. Also not recorded in the Royal Academy list, but mentioned in A Dictionary of Portrait Painters Up To 1920 is a portrait of the 2nd Duke of Wellington which is believed to be one of the earliest portraits of a sitter smoking a cigarette, which hangs in Stratfield Saye. Another exotic sitter had been the Sultan of Johore, who had visited England in 1891.Another portrait by Ethel was of Sir Walter Lowry Buller, the celebrated New Zealand ornithologist which is now in the NZ Museum in Wellington.The last work of hers that I have been able to discover (that of the Prince of Wales) seems to date to 1926.

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