carved in a contrasting sardonyx with a layer of pure white above a translucent pale brown striation, a left facing portrait in profile of the wife of Sir Thomas Rumbold (1736-1791), Lady Joanna Rumbold (née Law).
Mounted in a gold brooch.
Signed: ΠΙXΛΕΡ
Length: 3.5cm
Provenance
No.171, Catalogo d’Impronti cavati da Gemme incise dal Cav. Giovanni Pichler (1787), where it is described as ‘Portrait of Lady Rombold. Cameo. In agate-chalcedony.’
No.197, Tomo V, Casetto 4, La Collezione Paoletti: Stampi in vetro per impronte di intagli e cammei, volume II (Stefanelli, 2012),
where the subject of the gem is misdescribed as ‘Ottavia, Wife of Nero.’
A portrait miniature of Lady Joanna Rumbold can be found in the collection of Mount Vernon, Virginia (no.: H-4832), which was painted by Richard Cosway and is believed to have been commissioned for her brother Thomas Law before his departure in 1794 for America. Thomas Law married Martha Washington’s eldest surviving granddaughter, Elizabeth Parke Custis, in 1796.
Lady Rumbold was one of seven children of Edmund Law, Bishop of Carlisle. She married Sir Thomas Rumbold in May of 1772. He had amassed a fortune in India and was elected to the British Parliament in 1770. He would become a baronet of Woodhall in Hertfordshire in 1779. From 1777 he held the position of the Governor of Madras until his resignation in 1780.