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The Painter's Daughters by Emily Howes


Last week we visited the National Trust property in Hinton Ampner and saw all sorts of decorations and ornaments made from a purplish stone that looked a little like spotty marble.  I asked the steward what it was called and he very kindly gave me a very detailed answer.  The stone is porphyry which comes from just one single mountain in Egypt, and it was very popular in Regency England for interior decoration.  The name is also linked to the medical condition porphyria which turns the urine of sufferers a reddish purple.  George III is thought to have suffered from this condition and it would also have been responsible for his episodes of 'madness'.

Stay with me, I am getting to the point.  So, when I got home that evening I started this book, and by coincidence it was related to the inherited condition of porphyry and how it came into our royal family via the German House of Hanover.

Set in the mid 18th century, it is also the time of the portrait artist Thomas Gainsborough (you will almost certainly have seen the Blue Boy portrait) who was an established artist much admired by the higher social classes of the day. Between commissions he painted his two daughters several times, and they are the subjects of this novel.  It is factually correct that the eldest daughter, Molly, suffered from porphyria, and the mother of Gainsborough's wife was the illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Beaufort, but there is a tiny chance that she was really the illegitimate child of Frederick, the Prince of Wales (father of George III).  This would certainly account for Molly's illness and it makes a good story.

The author, Emily Howes, took this tiny chance of royal heritage and wove it in an out of historical events that are known to be true.  In the novel, innkeeper's daughter, Meg, is seduced by Prince Fredrick when he is newly arrived in England, and after she finds herself pregnant, she runs away to London to try to see him and secure financial help for the baby.  This early part of the tale is told alongside the lives of Gainsborough's daughters who were Meg's grandaughters.

The author has clearly done a great deal of research into the different levels of society of the period and the historical accuracy makes this a very believable version of events.  It is a debut novel for Howes and she has taken on some heavy topics that are mostly to do with the difficulties faced by women.  As well as the great stigma of anything to do with mental health, she also looked at the necessity for women to find a husband to take care of them after their father dies.  In a household full of women this is of paramount importance, espcially when one of the sisters is unlikely to marry and must rely on the other to care for her.

This is a really strong read and shows a different side of life to the world of Jane Austen which is just slightly later on in the Georgian period.
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