Catherine Read

Catherine Read (or Katherine) was a Scottish artist. Born in the early 18th century, she is most known for her work as a portrait-painter. She was for some years a fashionable artist in London, working in oils, crayons, and miniature. From 1760 she exhibited almost annually with either the Incorporated Society of Artists, the Free Society of Artist, or the Royal Academy, sending chiefly portraits of ladies and children of the aristocracy, which she painted with much grace and refinement. Early life Read was born in Dundee, Scotland, on 3 February 1723, to Alexander and Elizabeth Read, and one of thirteen children of an affluent Forfarshire family. She received her education from Maurice Quentin De La Tour in Edinburgh. Her mother was the sister of Sir John Wedderburn, 5th Baronet of Blackness, who fought in the Jacobite rising of 1745, and whose daughters were cared for by Read after his execution. Artistic education in Paris and Rome When the war ended at the Battle of Culloden and with family friends fleeing to France, Read’s family was prompted to follow suit for their association and support of the Jacobite cause through her uncle. Through their connections of the gentry, they were given sanctuary in Paris that same year and introduced to the painter Robert Strange, who is speculated to be Read’s teacher and introduction into the French artistic sphere. There she studied other works of art and improved her skills with little hindrance or instruction; it would have been hard for her to have been accepted into an academy class as a woman, let alone a foreigner whose family had a price on their heads for aiding and supporting a cause against the King of Great Britain and Ireland, but from the late 1740s she spent time in the studios of the pastellist Maurice Quentin de la Tour and Louis Blanchet. This period was not to last, however, as she fled to Rome in 1750 along with a majority of the Jacobites that had sought refuge in Paris. While there, she became friends with members of the Roman Catholic Church, often commissioned to recreate master paintings in oil or pastel for those in high clerical positions. One of these faithful patrons, Cardinal Albani, allowed Read to copy some of the portraits he owned by Rosalba Carriera, which ultimately led the man to sit for her himself.