WILLIAM WOOD (BRITISH, 1769-1810)

Elizabeth Maria Waller née Slack (d. 1809), was the first wife of Sir Jonathan Wathen-Waller, 1st Baronet, born Jonathan Wathen Phipps (1769-1853), by whom she had four children. Wathen-Waller was the oculist of Kings George III and William IV, and one of King George IV's physicians. He attended the King on his death bed.
In Wood's manuscript, this sitter appears as 'Mrs Eliza Phipps' (no. 5794), as her husband did not take on the surname of Waller until 1814, five years after her death, in order to inherit from his maternal grandfather. The record for this miniature describes her as living on Cork Street (the same street at Wood). It was done for her husband and was begun on 9 October 1800, finished on 7 November and delivered three days later at a cost 8 Gns. Presumably, in the first instance she was painted without a cap, as Wood has added at the bottom of the record, 'In July 1808, I added a cap of 507 white, & 558 [codes relating to specific pigments]'.
Wood painted a number of other members of the Wathen Phipps and Slack families, including the sitter's mother, 'The late Mrs Slack of Brayswick' (no. 6053), who is recorded as having been, 'copied from a very bad picture' in 1804-5, and the sitter's husband, 'Mr John Wathen Phipps of Cork Street' (no. 5586). This miniature was finished in May 1798, but according to Wood, it was destroyed in 1801, and replaced with another (no. 5803), presumably as an improvement on the first.