Mary Impey

X 29 17/32 in. (53 cm x 75 cm) Mary, Lady Impey (Reade; 2 March 1749 – 20 February 1818) was an English natural historian and patron of the arts in Bengal. The wife of Sir Elijah Impey, the Chief Justice of Bengal, she established a menagerie in Calcutta and commissioned Indian artists to paint the various creatures. Her paintings were later taken to England and were examined by John Latham who named several new species from them in his supplement to the General Synopsis of Birds (1787).

Born Mary Reade in Oxfordshire, she was the eldest of the three children of Sir John Reade, 5th Baronet, of Shipton Court, and his wife Harriet.[1] On 18 January 1768, at Hammersmith parish church (Fulham North Side) then just outside London, she married a thirty-six-year-old barrister, Elijah Impey, and over the next five years, bore him four children. Elijah Impey had two other children from an earlier relationship and Mary acknowledged the illegitimate children. The family lived on Essex Street off the strand until 1773. In 1773, Elijah Impey was knighted and made chief justice of Fort William in Bengal and the couple moved to India, leaving the children with their father's brother in Hammersmith. In 1775, having settled in Fort William, Impey started a collection of native birds and animals on the extensive gardens of the estate, off Burying Ground Road (now Park Street), which had formerly been that of Henry Vansittart, governor of Bengal from 1760 to 1764.[2]

Between 1775 and 1783, Impey bore four more children, three of whom survived to return with them to England in 1783 when her husband was impeached. They returned to England in June 1784. She bore one more child back in England. They lived on Grosvenor Street initially, moving to Wimpole Street and finally to Newick Park, near Lewes, East Sussex. In 1801-3 they lived in Paris. Her husband died in 1809 and she died in 1818 and both were buried in a family vault at St Paul's, Hammersmith, London. They are commemorated in the church with a wall monument by Peter Rouw. The Himalayan monal (Lophophorus impejanus) was named 'Impeyan pheasant' in her honour. A portrait of her by Thomas Gainsborough sold for 2,800 guineas (£2,940) at a Christies auction in 1904.[10] The portrait is now in Furman University.

The authorities additionally record the headings Mary Reade and Lady Mary Impey. Her recorded language was English. She was the child of Sir John Reade, 5th Bt. And Harriet Barker. She married Elijah Impey. 3 children are recorded: Maria Impey, Michael Impey and Marian Impey.