Sherwill, Lucy Maria, Mrs (McKechnie Section 1)
Recorded by Jackson (Dictionary). Until the publїcation of the present book, most of the information on Mrs Sherwill was contained in an article by Mr F. Gordon Roe (‘A Forgotten Group of Profilists’) Apollo, November 1935, who also mentions her in Women in Profile (London 1970).
Lucy Maria Sherwill was the eldest daughter of the doctor, scientist and profilist James Lind (q.v.). The date of her birth is unknown, but we do know that her father was born in 1736, and that her husband, Markham Eeles Sherwill, by whom she had three sons and five daughters, was born in 1787. These dates indicate that she was born when her father was already middle-aged. She had a brother, Alexander, and two younger sisters, Anne Elizabeth and Dorothea Sophia.
It seems almost certain that some of her profiles were cut during her youth in Windsor, where her father worked for some years after his appointment as physician to the Royal Household in c. 1777. It seems doubtful that she used her talent commercially.
Her name appears in two of the letters in the series written by Tiberius Cavallo to her father, with whom he collaborated in the production of silhouettes. Excerpts from this series of letters are quoted in the entry on Lind. The first of the two which concern Lucy, written in London and dated 21 December 1800 (part of which, incidentally, suggests that Lucy was still living in Windsor at the time) contains the following passage: ‘I wish Lucy would cut for me four or five little pieces of paper with figures somewhat like those you stamped [that is, printed], and that she would shade one or two, and leave the rest white. When you have an opportunity of sending the cuttings be so good as to enclose four or five copies of Buonaparte’s profile.’
The other letter, also written in London and dated 24 June 1807, begins: ‘Herewith you will receive your vol. of the phil. trans. together with a packet for Lucy.’ This last quotation suggests that Cavallo may have reduced profiles cut life-size by Lucy, as well as those cut by her father.
In 1877 the Sherwills’ second son, Lieutenant-Colonel Walter Stanhope Sherwill, presented a collection of his mother’s silhouettes to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. These included portraits of George III and Queen Charlotte (no doubt cut during the artist’s years in Windsor) and also a portrait of their youngest daughter, Princess Amelia, which must have been cut at some time before 1810, in which year the Princess died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-seven.
This collection also contains portraits of Dr and Mrs Delany (after her husband’s death Mrs Delany became a friend of George III and Queen Charlotte, and introduced Fanny Burney to the Court) and of many other distinguished persons. It includes what Jackson described as a full-length portrait of Thomas Gray, the poet. Since Gray died in 1771, this silhouette must almost certainly have been taken after his death, in the light of our scanty information about Mrs Sherwill’s life.
I have not seen the silhouettes owned by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. Cavallo’s letter of 21 December 1800 suggests that she cut them in sizes similar to those of the reduced profiles printed by Lind (that is, in the normal sizes). It is notable that Cavallo suggests in this letter that Lucy should ‘shade’ one or two. This must mean that the white paper from which the profiles were cut had to be blackened, as one would expect in the light of recent research, which shows that ready-made black-surfaced papers did not become available until c.
1826.
No doubt some of Mrs Sherwill’s extant work is signed or inscribed, but she would probably not have used trade labels.