Mary MacDonell Chichester, Lady Clifford Constable (1768-1825)

This accomplished and delightful portrait is by the fashionable 18th-century society portraitist George Romney. Mary Chichester was the daughter of John Chichester of Arlington in Devon. She is first recorded as sitting for Romney on April 22 1789, and there followed a further five sittings. In 1791 she married Thomas Hugh Clifford of Tixal Hall in Staffordshire, who inherited Burton Constable Hall in 1821 and assumed the name Clifford Constable. The family remain in residence and her portrait joins a collection of Constable family portraits.