Foster 833

Mrs. Frances Johnson (1725-1812). Attributed to Hickey, c.1790

Mrs. Johnson was the second daughter of Edward Crooke, Governor of Fort St. David. According to her own account as recorded on her tomb in St. John's churchyard, Calcutta, in 1738, at the age of thirteen, she married Parry Purple Templar, nephew of the Governor of Calcutta; but she was widowed in 1743. The eccesiastical records in fact record this marriage (to Parry Purnell Templer) as taking place in Calcutta on 3 November 1744. Templer died on 25 January 1748, and on 2 November that year she married James Altham, who almost immediately died of smallpox and was buried on 12 November. On 24 November 1749 she married William Watts, the Company’s Chief at Kasimbazar who negotiated the treaty of 1757 with Mir Jafar. A painting of this event was later made by Benjamin Wilson (see M. Archer (1979), 415, pl.330). In 1760 Mr. and Mrs. Watts retired to England but after her husband’s death in 1764 she returned to Calcutta to settle his affairs. Here on 1 June 1774 she married the Revd. William Johnson, Chaplain of Calcutta, popularly known as the ‘Rev Tally-ho’. When he retired to England in 1778 she stayed on in Calcutta until her death aged eighty-seven. Her mausoleum is in the old burial ground beside St. John’s Church. Known as ‘Begum Johnson’ she queened it over Calcutta society and was renowned for her ‘dignified and generous hospitality’. Her obituary noted that ‘she abounded in anecdote; and possessing ease and affability of communication, her conversation was always interesting, without any tendency to fatigue the hearer.’ Her grandson, Lord Liverpool, became Prime Minister of England.

Oil on canvas; 30.5 by 25 ins (77 by 63.5 cms)

On loan from the Government Art Collection, March 1979

Literature: M. Archer (1979), 209, pl.130; ‘India Office Library And Records Newsletter,’ no.18, November 1979.

The sitter seems to be the only source for her birth year, which is not recorded in the ecclesiastical returns, but she may of course have forgotten that as she clearly did that of her first two marriages. Stylistically, the painting is unlikely to be as early as 1784 as thought by Archer, when compared with such fresh and loosely painted works as F878, which is signed and dated 1786, and seems more to belong to Hickey's second period in Calcutta from 1799, although it could just be fitted in stylistically to the end of his first Calcutta period in 1790. The sitter was by all accounts very well preserved for her age.