This marble bust, inscribed Henrietta Finch (1702-1742) and dated 1741, is a copy of a bust thought to be of Lady Elizabeth Finch (1703-84) by Louis Francois Roubiliac at Kenwood, London, previously dated c.1745. As the present marble is a lesser copy of the Kenwood sculpture, it is likely that the Roubiliac at Kenwood is in fact slightly earlier than previously thought, probably around 1740. Because of the inscription on the pedestal, the present bust was once thought to be a portrait of Lady Henrietta Finch, Lady Elizabeth's sister. However, it is more likely that it was in fact made by Henrietta: in a family portrait from the early 1730s, now in the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Henrietta is shown standing next to a modelling stand on sits a bust, accompanied with various modelling tools, as if she were in fact a practising sculptor. This would mean that the inscription is a signature, rather than one identifying the sitter. As such, it is an exceptional example of a marble sculpture by an eighteenth-century female sculptor in Britain. Although aristocratic women at the time were often meant to acquire some artistic skills, and learning how to model clay could have been considered appropriate, carving marble was very different.
It is also an interesting example of a copy, reflecting the idea of multiples in sculpture that was prevalent in the 18th and 19th centuries. The V&A's acquisition of this bust means that it joins other busts and monuments of members of the Finch family already in the collection. A pair of silver-gilt salvers by Charles Kandler, celebrating the marriage of Henrietta Finch to William Fitzroy, 3rd Duke of Cleveland in 1731/2, is also in the V&A as part of the Gilbert collection. (See references)
In 1738, Lady Elizabeth Finch married the judge William Murray who later became 1st Earl of Mansfield. They had no children together, but took care of their grand-niece Elizabeth Murray (born in 1760) whose mother had died, and of Dido Elizabeth Belle (1761-1820), illegitimate daughter of Maria Belle, an enslaved woman from the British Indies, and Sir John Lindsay, William Murray’s nephew. In 1765, Lindsay brought Dido Belle with him to England and entrusted the Murrays to bring her into a free gentlewoman at their home in Kenwood House.