John Downman, A.R.A. (Ruabon, Wales 1750-1824 Wrexham)

The sitter in this drawing has previously been identified as Miss Arabella Parkinson of Kinnersley Castle, Herefordshire. However, this is a conflation of Arabella Altham, wife of John Graham-Clarke, and her daughter-in-law, Mary Elizabeth Parkinson of Kinnersley Castle. The costume suggests a date of c. 1805, and as such it seems likely that the sitter is Arabella, rather than Mary Elizabeth, who was born in 1786. Arabella was the maternal grandmother of the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861).