The Collection

(Augusta) Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (1815-1852) Mathematician; Daughter of Lord Byron

Margaret Sarah Carpenter

(Augusta) Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (1815-1852) Mathematician; Daughter of Lord Byron


License this image




Share:



Tab Label (see title)
ArtistMargaret Sarah Carpenter (1793-1872)
Title(Augusta) Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (1815-1852) Mathematician; Daughter of Lord Byron
Date1835
MediumOil on canvas
Provenance4th Earl of Lytton; purchased from the Earl of Lytton via Leggatt Bros. 1953
ExhibitionSummer Exhibition, The Royal Academy of Arts, 1836, as 'Lady King' (Cat. No. 136); Messrs. Shepherd's Gallery, London, 1899; Byron Exhibition, V&A Museum, London, 19/4-25/8/1974; "Sieben Hugel - Bilder und Zeichen des 21. Jahrhunderts", Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin 14/5-29/10/2000; St. Mary Magdelene Church, Hucknall, Nottinghamshire, during International Byron Festival, 30/6 - 16/7/2006; "Government Art Collection: Selected by Downing Street Staff: 12 from No 10", Whitechapel Gallery, London, 9/3 - 10/6/2012; "Revealed: Government Art Collection", Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery 17/11/2012-24/2/2013 & Ulster Museum, Belfast 15/3-9/6/2013.
Dimensionsheight: 216.00 cm, width: 137.00 cm
Inscriptionbr: Margaret Carpenter / 1836
AcquisitionPurchased from the 4th Earl of Lytton via Leggatt Bros, June 1953
LocationOther, public exhibitions,
GAC number2172
 

Other works by this artist

View All

Tab Label (see title)

Ada, Countess of Lovelace wears a white dress and red cape, trimmed with gold, in this work by the prolific portrait painter Margaret Carpenter. Ada was the daughter of Lord Byron, the product of the poet’s year-long marriage to Annabella Milbanke in 1815. Ada was raised by her mother and became a mathematician, assisting Charles Babbage in his work on mechanical computers.

This work was painted in 1836, the year the first of Ada’s three children was born to her and husband William King, eighth Baron King of Ockham (created Earl of Lovelace in 1838). The portrait was well received when exhibited at the Royal Academy that year. However, Ada’s own response to Carpenter’s truthful likeness of herself was to quip:
‘I conclude she is bent on displaying the whole expanse of my capacious jaw bone, upon which I think the word Mathematics should be written.’

A note in ‘The Spectator’ of 1839 favours Carpenter’s ‘chaste and lady-like portrait’ of Ada over a now well-known watercolour portrait of her, painted some three years later by Alfred Edward Chalon, which is described as showing the sitter ‘courting admiration’. The watercolour is now in the collection of the Science Museum in London.

Tab Label (see title)
Tab Label (see title)
Tab Label (see title)

This work contains the following Sitters; choose a link below to cross-refer to other works in the collection:

Tab Label (see title)

Margaret Sarah Carpenter

Margaret Sarah Carpenter was born Margaret Geddes in Salisbury, Wiltshire; the daughter of a retired army officer. She studied under a local artist and copied Old Master paintings at the Earl of Radnor’s Longford Castle. The Earl helped fund her move to London in 1813, following which she won three gold medals at the Society of Arts. In c.1815 she was a pupil of Thomas Lawrence. She married William Hookham Carpenter and had eight children, three of whom died in infancy. Three surviving children would become painters. She lived in Marylebone before moving to the British Museum in 1852, her husband being Keeper of Prints and Drawings. She received over 100 commissions from Eton College and produced some 1,100 works in total, exhibiting 263.