Penelope Boothby

Penelope Boothby (11 April 1785 – 13 March 1791) was a girl who has become one of the most famous child characters in British art. Her image inspired the paintings by Joshua Reynolds, Henry Fuseli, John Everett Millais, a sculpture by Thomas Banks, photographs of Lewis Carroll, sonnet of Brooke Boothby. According to art historians and historians, in the art of the 19th-20th centuries Penelope Boothby became a classic child of the Romantic era, the keeper of heavenly innocence, a symbol of “what we have lost and what we are afraid to lose.” The image of Penelope was actively exploited by popular culture throughout the 20th century.

Biography
She was the daughter of Sir Brooke Boothby (1744-1824), linguist, translator and poet, and his wife, Susanna Bristoe (1755-1822). Boothby highly appreciated the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and was the translator of his works. Penelope's father inherited the title in 1789, was also an amateur botanist, and collaborated in his research with Erasmus Darwin. He was well acquainted with several activists of the Blue Stockings Society, and was known as a connoisseur of fine arts and philanthropist.

At the age of three (in July 1788), Penelope became a model for the outstanding British artist Joshua Reynolds in his London studio (for the painting “Portrait of Penelope Boothby,” or “Cap”, London National Gallery).

Shortly after completing the portrait, Boothby and his daughter returned to Derbyshire, where his family estate at Ashbourne was located. Penelope probably spent the rest of her short life at Ashbourne Hall. Penelope was a quiet girl who preferred playing with dolls in solitude to any noisy fuss, although she had a cheerful disposition. She loved her father very much and waited at the gates of his return home, and in the evenings sat on his lap. On Sundays in the morning, she accompanied her mother to the old Ashbourne church and knelt beside her during the service. All this and much more can be learned from the book “Sorrows Sacred to the Memory of Penelope”, written by her father. The book includes 24 sonnets. She died in 1791 at age 5 years, 11 months, after an illness that lasted about a month. She was unsuccessfully treated by Erasmus Darwin.

Her grieving father also memorialized his child with the commission of a painting by Henry Fuseli depicting Penelope taken up to heaven in the arms of an angel and a sculpture by Thomas Banks for her tomb that depicts her asleep.