Rinck, Jonathan. “Maria Spilsbury (1776-1820): Artist and Evangelical.” CAA Reviews (March 22, 2012): 1.
Abstract: In her short biographical work Father and Daughter: Jonathan and Maria Spilsbury (London: Epworth, 1952), Ruth Young, a descendant of Maria Spilsbury (Spilsbury-Taylor, after her marriage in 1808), recounts a delightful anecdote in which the future KingGeorge IV visited Spilsbury’s studio on St. George’s Row, London. Impatient with how slowly work was progressing on his commission which, to his judgment, seemed complete, he exclaimed, “Really, Mrs. Taylor, I swear that you can do no more to that! You’ve finished it and a damned good picture it is.” Unconvinced, Spilsbury sought a second opinion from her maid. Upon close inspection, the maid astutely pointed out that, distressingly, the woman sewing in the painting still lacked a thimble. At this, the exasperated prince, Young writes, chased the maid out of the room, “her cap-strings flying” (32). Any other artist might have obligingly yielded to the prince, but such was Spilsbury’s notoriety that visits from the Prince Regent, her chief patron, were merely commonplace.
