Bath, Art and Architecture: 08/16/24

Portrait Sculpture at Wilton House, no 3.

Updated 29 January 2026 with details of the bust of Pincess Amelia at the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge.

I am very grateful to the 18th Earl and Countess of Pembroke for allowing me to visit Wilton House with my camera and giving me free access to the sculptures outside visiting hours.

I am also very grateful to all the staff at Wilton - Charlotte Spender, Sandie Buxcie, and in particular the House Manager Nigel Bailey and all at Wilton who made me feel most welcome.

Mary Fitzwilliam, Countess of Pembroke by Roubiliac.

Marble Bust.

8 Sept. 1707 - 13 Feb. 1769.

Mary FitzWilliam, who married firstly Henry Herbert, 9th Earl of Pembroke; through this marriage in the following century, the great FitzWilliam inheritance passed into the Herbert family, who are today still substantial landowners in Dublin city.

She married secondly Major North Ludlow Bernard, of Castle Bernard, Bandon, County Cork, who was the grandfather through his first wife of the first Earl of Bandon.

In the Roubiliac Sale at St Martin's Lane, A plaster bust was sold on the Third Day Friday May 14th 1762 lot 17, Lady Pembroke.

Until recently it was thought that there is only one copy of this catalogue extant in the Finberg Collection in the British Museum but I have discovered another in the Cottonian Library in Plymouth.

see -

https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/esdaile1928/0340/image,text_ocr

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The Roubiliac Bust of Princess Amelia in the Fitzwilliam Museum.

Roubiliac here employs the same dress.

He obviously used some sort of pointing machine.

This reuse of the dress is unique to Roubiliac.