This c.1760 Battersea enamel plaque depicts Maria Gunning, the Countess of Coventry. A famous Irish beauty and London society hostess, Gunning was once mobbed in Hyde Park. Her death, aged 27, from lead and mercury poisoning was attributed to her heavy use of make-up.
This plaque, with a portrait copied from Jean-Etienne Liotard’s 1749 painting of Gunning in Turkish costume, is guided at £1500-2000 in Woolley & Wallis’ English and European ceramics sale in Salisbury on October 18.