Lost Drawing of the Young Elizabeth Craven


I am very grateful to a reader for sending this image of a very little known drawing of Elizabeth Craven. The drawing, in profile, was done when she was still very young, certainly no more than  sixteen, by an unknown artist. It was kept as an heirloom in the Craven family until 1984, when it was auctioned at Phillips' in London along with other paintings that were part of the estate of the 7th Earl of  Craven. 
The reproduction is from Phillips' auction catalogue, where it is attributed to the "school of Romney" but the drawing is unsigned.
The drawing gives us a meticulous, almost photographic, image of what the young Elizabeth - who was then Lady Elizabeth Berkeley - looked like. This is the face that her future husband, William Craven, fell in love with, for better or worse.
At the same auction further paintings by Thomas Beach of Elizabeth's children were sold and are presumably now in private collections.



Many thanks for this, Stephen!


To find out more about Elizabeth Craven, her life and her writings, read  Elizabeth Craven: Writer, Feminist and European by Julia Gasper
published by Vernon Press.

https://vernonpress.com/title?id=334



23 Jun 2017 - Elizabeth Craven's fascinating life was full of travel, love-affairs and scandals but this biography, the first to appear for a century, is the only one to focus on her as a writer...

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