Shelley's Ghost

According to Lady Shelley this posthumous miniature was ultimately based upon a death-mask, though presumably the artist was also informed by the personal knowledge of the Shelleys and their idealized recollections of Mary’s appearance. Mary wears blue-and-yellow pansies, the symbol of remembrance which she adopted after Shelley’s death in July 1822, and a circlet in her hair which can also be seen in the portrait by Richard Rothwell, bequeathed to the National Portrait Gallery by Lady Shelley. Both these portraits compare interestingly with another portrait identified as Mary Shelley

The ornateness and colouring of the gilt metal frames in which this, and the matching portrait by Easton of Shelley as a boy, are housed, are strongly redolent of Lady Shelley’s Shelley Sanctum, where the miniatures were displayed.

The connection of Reginald Easton (1807-93) with the Shelleys goes back to at least 1857, when he made sketches of Thomas Jefferson Hogg playing chess at Boscombe Manor.