Subject
QUERY: Marina's Portrait (in ADA)
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Date
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EDITOR's QUERY.
Marina's portrait, a rather good oil by Tresham, hanging above her on the wall, showed her wearing the picture hat she had used for the rehearsal of a Hunting Scene ten years ago, romantically brimmed, with a rainbow wing and a great drooping plume of black-banded silver; ......................... Marina's face was now made up to imitate her former looks, but fashions had changed, her cotton dress was a rustic print, her auburn locks were bleached and no longer tumbled down her temples, and nothing in her attire or adornments echoed the dash of her riding crop in the picture and the regular pattern of her brilliant plumage which Tresham had rendered with ornithological skill. (ADA I-5)
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EDQUERY:
I suspect that Marina's portrait--described above--is based on an actual portrait of "a famous beauty." Her picture hat plumage is from the "Lady Amherst Pheasant," amateur naturalist wife of Lord William Pitt Amherst, a Governor of India who sent the first specimen to England in 1828, where it was named in honor of his wife. The alleged artist "Tresham" is an anagram of Amherst and the adjacent passages of text contain several references to Lady Amherst and her pheasant. The showy birds were later bred in England and their feathers were often used in picture hats late in the century. Within the time framework of ADA, Marina's portrait dates from 1874. Marina's costume is from a "Hunting Scene" in an unnamed play. The surrounding dialogue is quite "Chekhovian" but a search for "pheasant" in Chekhov's major plays turns up nothing likely. Searches for a portrait of Lady Amherst.
Can anyone identify the portrait prototype--if indeed one exists?