Portrait miniature of Baron Hompesch, 1780

Portrait miniature of Franz Carl Freiherr von Hompesch - Bolheim, German politician and father of Isabella Baronin von Hompesh with whom George Richard St.John, 3rd Viscount Bolingbroke, secretly eloped. He is seen wearing the Star and Sash of Bavarian Order of St. Hubert.

At the time of the elopement George was still married to his first wife Charlotte Collins but he succeeded in seducing the seventeen year old Isabella into marrying him in secret ceremony near her family's castle at Dusseldorf. Afterwards he threw her bonnet and shawl into a stream to trick her family into believing her drowned, and intercepted her letters to her father in which she pleaded for forgiveness for her clandestine marriage. (Recommended read: The Ladies of Lydiard by Frances Bevan, 2021).

The miniature was one of a group of seven, framed together, which were sold by Kenneth St.John 7th Viscount Bolingbroke at Sotheby's on 28th February 1991. Lydiard House acquired five of the miniatures with grant assistance from the Museums and Galleries Commission V & A Purchase Grant Fund.