Frances Mary Richardson Currer (1785–1861), portrait of | Seated half-length, in a white dress holding a red book

Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 7 March 2007, lot 115 (as follower of Sir Thomas Lawrence, Portrait of a lady, traditionally identified as Anne Goddard, Lady Lethbridge (d.1857));

Subsequently acquired by the present owner.

Frances Mary Richardson Currer (1785–1861) was a wealthy Yorkshire heiress and one of the most distinguished book collectors of her time, amassing a celebrated library of over 20,000 volumes at Eshton Hall. Her collection was renowned for its breadth and quality, and included substantial holdings in natural science, topography, antiquities, and history, together with the classics. The bibliographer Thomas Frognall Dibdin considered that Miss Currer’s collection placed her “at the head of all female collectors in Europe” (Reminiscences, 2.949) and judged her library to be surpassed in its day only by those of Earl Spencer, the Duke of Devonshire, and the Duke of Buckingham. Later, the bibliographer Seymour De Ricci described Currer as “England’s earliest female bibliophile” (De Ricci, 141). Known for her generosity, Currer financially supported scholarly and literary projects, and her name is sometimes associated with the Brontë family: she is believed to have assisted the impoverished Patrick Brontë, father of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, with a charitable gift during a period of hardship. Frances Currer’s surname is also thought to have inspired Charlotte Brontë’s choice of the pseudonym “Currer Bell” when she published her 1847 novel Jane Eyre. A contemporary of Jane Austen, Currer moved in an age when women’s contributions to literature and scholarship were often overlooked, yet her activities as a collector and patron earned her lasting distinction. Frances Currer died at Eshton Hall on 28 April 1861 and was buried beside her mother at St Andrew’s Church, Gargrave.

A highly comparable full-length portrait of the sitter by Masquerier is in a private collection.¹

¹ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Frances_Mary_Richardson_Currer_1807.PNG