by Sir Frederic Leighton (1830–1896)
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But he who dares not grasp the thorn
Should never crave the rose.
― Anne Brontë
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.
― William Butler Yeats, The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats
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About the subject of the painting
A full-length portrait of a young woman, standing, turned slightly to proper left, gazing to bottom left, wearing a voluminous draped ivory gown and holding a posy of pink roses to her right shoulder in her right hand. Against blue sky, with large white cumulus and cirrus clouds, and parkland at Ashridge, Hertfordshire.
Adelaide was the youngest of three daughters of Henry John Chetwynd-Talbot, 18th Earl of Shrewsbury and Lady Sarah Elizabeth Beresford. She married Adelbert Wellington Brownlow Cust, 3rd Earl Brownlow (1844-1921), son of John Hume Egerton, Viscount Alford and Lady Marianne Margaret Compton, on 22 June 1868 at Ford Castle, Northumberland. They lived at Belton and Ashridge Park, Herefordshire, She died at Carlton Terrace, London, England, after a long illness, without issue. Her sisters became Countess of Pembroke and Countess Cowper respectively.
In 1893 Lady Paget described Lady Brownlow as the “most beautiful of three sisters, every one of them the salt of the earth. She was seated between Lady Lothian and Lady Pembroke, the former in trailing black and the latter in trailing white draperies. Lady Brownlow was in sober grey of the same make, and they looked like the Three Fates. They all asked questions in high-pitched voices.”
Sources:
[1] Original image and description from National Trust Collections.
[2] The Real Victorian's digitally enhanced version of the painting (seen above), downloadable as an 8 x 13 @ 300 ppi JPEG.
Digitally enhanced reproductions of public domain paintings are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
