Gilt framed portrait of woman, seascape background. Artist signed and dated.A large gilt-framed oil painting portrait signed and dated 1885 by artist HENRY JONES THADDEUS (1859 1929), of MARY GARRETT MICHELL (d. April 8, 1921) of Yorkshire, England. Stylized seascape background. Mary was the daughter of Rev. William Thomas Garrett of Crakehalls, York, the Anglican Vicar of East Witton, whose family claimed descent from Sir William Garrett, Lord Mayor of London in 1555. In 1850, Rev. Garrett married Anne Horsfall (d. 1894), member of a prominent Yorkshire family. They had four children, of whom Mary was the youngest. In 1875, Mary Garrett married John Michell (1847-1878), the son of John Michell the Elder, J.P. (justice of the peace; 1819-1896), Magistrate and Deputy Lieutenant of Durham County. The Michells were the landlords of Forcett Hall, an ancient English manor first granted as a gift by William the Conqueror. John Michell the Younger, Mary s husband, had a promising start as a member of Yorkshire s landed gentry: he was appointed Justice of the Peace like his crown officer father, before dying tragically only three years after his marriage, in 1878. At the time she sat for this painting, the young Mary was already seven years a widow. Their home, Forcett Hall originally an Elizabethan house was redesigned in 1740 in the Palladian style by architect Daniel Garrett (possibly an ancestor of Mary). It was owned by the Shuttleworth family from the 16th century until 1785, when Robert Shuttleworth sold the estate to Frances Michell and her son, Charles, ancestor of Mary s husband. The artist, Henry Jones Thaddeus (1859 1929), was a realist and portrait painter born and trained in County Cork, Ireland. Born Henry Thaddeus Jones in 1859, he entered the Cork School of Art when he was ten years old. There he studied under the genre painter James Brenan. Thaddeus won the Taylor Prize in 1878 enabling him to go to London, and then again in 1879, which allowed him to continue his studies in Paris at the Acad mie Julian. His first major painting Le retour du braconnier ("The Wounded Poacher," 1881), now in the National Gallery of Ireland was hung "on the line" (at eye-level) at the Paris Salon of 1881. While in Brittany, he painted several pictures in the port of Concarneau. But it was as a portraitist that Thaddeus made his lasting reputation. His first success in this genre were portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Teck (relatives of the future Queen Mary), which were shown at the Royal Academy in 1884. The Tecks provided him with introductions to other influential sitters. Thaddeus received two portrait commissions from Pope Pius X (and possibly an earlier one for a portrait of Pope Leo XIII in 1885/86). A Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, he traveled widely, including to Egypt in 1889 where he painted the Khedive; this portrait was subsequently presented to Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle. He also traveled to Australia. His autobiography, Recollections of a Court Painter, may have been written during time in California. In his later years he settled in the Isle of Wight and died there at Ryde in 1929. Decades after his death, art historian Julian Campbell became interested in the artist, and assembled an exhibition of Irish Impressionists in 1984 at the National Gallery of Ireland that included examples of Jones s work. Artist: Henry Jones ThaddeusIssued: 1885Dimensions: 45"W x 56"L framedCountry of Origin: England Condition: Good