Dorothea Banks Explained

Lady Banks
Birth Name:Dorothea Hugessen
Birth Date:8 November 1758
Death Date:1828
Spouse:Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Baronet
Parents:William Western Hugessen
Thomazine Honywood

Dorothea, Lady Banks (née Hugessen, 8 November 1758 – 1828) was an English heiress and collector of ceramics. Her collection of ceramics, which she displayed in the dairy of her home at Spring Grove, is recorded in her Dairy Book.[1] Like the ephemera collection of her sister-in-law Sarah Sophia Banks, it is informative about women collectors in the Georgian period.

Biography

She was born Dorothea Hugessen on 8 November 1758, one of two daughters of William Western Hugessen of Proveden, Kent, and his wife Thomazine, née Honywood, the daughter of Sir John Honywood.[2] She was a 'well-acred heiress' at the time of her marriage to scientist Sir Joseph Banks on 23 March 1779,[3] and she was described by Banks' colleague Daniel Solander as 'rather handsome, very agreable, chatty & laughs a good deal.'[4]

Art collection

Dorothea converted the dairy on their property at Spring Grove into an exhibition-house for her collection of ceramics. Banks said that she was 'a little old-china mad, but she wishes to mix as much reason with her madness as possible.'[5] She sought authentically Eastern pieces rather than those produced for the western market, and designed a classification system for them. In 1804 King George III and his family visited her collection, and she served him produce from the dairy on some of her china.[6]

The collection was sold at Christie’s in 1893 after the death of her great-nephew, who had inherited it, and found to contain Minton, Crown Derby, Sèvres, and Dresden ware as well as oriental pieces.[7] Dorothea inherited the ephemera collection of her sister-in-law Sarah Sophia Banks, who lived with them, and donated it to the British Museum in her name.[8]

Lady Banks rose

The Lady Banks rose, brought to Kew Gardens from China by William Kerr and cultivated by her husband, was named after her.[9]

References

  1. Newport . Emma . 2018 . The Fictility of Porcelain: Making and Shaping Meaning in Lady Dorothea Banks's "Dairy Book" . Eighteenth-Century Fiction . en . 31 . 1 . 117–142 . 10.3138/ecf.31.1.117 . 0840-6286.
  2. Book: The Complete Baronetage . Cokayne . George Edward . V . 211.
  3. Web site: Banks, Sir Joseph, baronet (1743–1820), naturalist and patron of science . 2024-03-27 . Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . en . 10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-1300?rskey=gtb33l&result=1. 2024-04-26 .
  4. Book: Gascoigne, John . Joseph Banks and the English Enlightenment: Useful Knowledge and Polite Culture . 2003-12-18 . Cambridge University Press . 978-0-521-54211-1 . 26 . en.
  5. Book: Smith, Edward . The Life of Sir Joseph Banks . 1975 . Arno Press . 978-0-405-06618-4 . 272–3 . en.
  6. Leis . Arlene . 2017 . 'A Little Old-China Mad': Lady Dorothea Banks (1758-1828) and Her Dairy at Spring Grove . Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies . en . 40 . 2 . 199–221 . 10.1111/1754-0208.12410 . 1754-0194.
  7. Book: Leis . Arlene . Women and the Art and Science of Collecting in Eighteenth-Century Europe . Wills . Kacie L. . 2020-08-31 . Routledge . 978-1-000-17522-6 . 1 . en.
  8. Book: Russell, Gillian . The Ephemeral Eighteenth-Century: Print, Sociability and the Cultures of Collecting . 2020-08-27 . Cambridge University Press . 978-1-108-48758-0 . 102 . en.
  9. Book: Gribbin . Mary . Flower Hunters . Gribbin . John . 2008 . Oxford University Press . 978-0-19-280718-2 . 103 . en.