{{Short description|British art model and subject of poetry}} {{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}} {{Use British English|date=March 2025}} {{Infobox person | name = Penelope Boothby | image = Penelope Boothby by Joshua Reynolds.jpg | caption = Penelope Boothby in 1788 in a painting by Joshua Reynolds | birth_date = {{Birth date|1785|04|11|df=y}} | birth_place = Lichfield | death_date = {{Death date and age|1791|03|13|1785|04|11|df=y}} | death_place = Ashbourne, Derbyshire | occupation = Model }} '''Penelope Boothby''' (11 April 1785{{spaced ndash}}13 March 1791) was a girl who has become one of the most famous child characters in British art. Her image inspired the paintings by Joshua Reynolds, Henry Fuseli, John Everett Millais, a sculpture by Thomas Banks, photographs of Lewis Carroll, as well as sonnets of Brooke Boothby, her father.<ref name=Mitchell>{{ODNB |id=55391 |last=Mitchell |first=Rosemary |title=Boothby, Penelope (1785–1791) |year=2011 |orig-year=2010 }}</ref>
According to art historians and historians, in the art of the 19th–20th centuries Penelope Boothby became a classic child of the Romantic era, the keeper of heavenly innocence, a symbol of "what we have lost and what we are afraid to lose".<ref name=Mitchell /> The image of Penelope was actively exploited by popular culture throughout the 20th century.<ref name=Warren>{{cite web |title=Moppets, muffets and the perpetuation of Penelope Boothby |author=Warren, Richard|publisher=Richard Warren |url=https://richardawarren.wordpress.com/2012/09/24/moppets-muffets-and-the-perpetuation-of-penelope-boothby/|date=September 24, 2012|access-date=2017-02-05}}</ref>
== Biography == [[File:Fuseli Henry The Apotheosis Of Penelope Boothby-1-1.jpg|left|thumb|''The Apotheosis of Penelope Boothby'' by Henry Fuseli]] [[File:Penelope Boothby, St. Oswald, Ashbourne.jpg|thumb|left|Tomb of Penelope Boothby by Thomas Banks (1793) in St Oswald's Church, Ashbourne]] Penelope was the daughter of Sir Brooke Boothby, 6th Baronet (1744–1824), linguist, translator and poet, and his wife, Susanna Bristoe (1755–1822).<ref name=autogenerated1>{{cite web |title=For his most famous child portrait, Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) drew inspiration from an eighteenth-century painting |author=Flukinger, Roy|publisher=Cultural Compass at the Harry Ransom Center. The University of Texas at Austin |url=http://blog.hrc.utexas.edu/2013/11/08/for-his-most-famous-child-portrait-charles-dodgson-aka-lewis-carroll-drew-inspiration-from-an-eighteenth-century-painting/|access-date=2017-02-05}}</ref> Boothby highly appreciated the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and was the translator of his works.<ref name=Warren /> Penelope's father inherited the title in 1789, was also an amateur botanist, and collaborated in his research with Erasmus Darwin. He was well acquainted with several activists of the Blue Stockings Society, and was known as a connoisseur of fine arts and philanthropist.<ref name=Mitchell />
At the age of three (in July 1788), Penelope became a model for the artist Joshua Reynolds in his London studio, for the painting ''Portrait of Penelope Boothby'', or ''The Mob Cap'' (now held in the National Gallery).<ref name=Mitchell />
Shortly after the completion of the portrait, Boothby and his daughter returned to Derbyshire, where his family estate at Ashbourne was located. Penelope probably spent the rest of her short life at Ashbourne Hall.<ref name=autogenerated1 /> Penelope was a quiet girl who preferred playing with dolls in solitude to any noisy fuss, although she had a cheerful disposition. She loved her father very much and waited at the gates of his return home, and in the evenings sat on his lap. On Sundays in the morning, she accompanied her mother to the Ashbourne parish church and knelt beside her during the service. All this and much more can be learned from the book ''Sorrows Sacred to the Memory of Penelope'', written by her father. The book includes 24 sonnets.<ref name=autogenerated2>{{cite book |author=Hurll, Estelle M. |chapter=Penelope Boothby |url=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19009/19009-h/19009-h.htm#I |title=Sir Joshua Reynolds. A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the Painter with Introduction and Interpretation |location= Boston, New York |date=2006 |publisher=The Riverside Press Cambridge |pages=1–6}}</ref> She died in 1791 at age 5 years, 11 months, after an illness that lasted about a month. She was unsuccessfully treated by Erasmus Darwin.
Her grieving father memorialised his child with the commission of a painting by Henry Fuseli depicting Penelope taken up to heaven in the arms of an angel; and also a sculpture by Thomas Banks for her tomb in St Oswald's Church, Ashbourne that depicts her asleep.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Clive J. |last=Easter |year=2023 |title=The monument to Penelope Boothby in St Oswald's, Ashbourne |journal=British Art Journal |volume=24 |issue=2 |pages=67–70 |jstor=48760523 }}</ref>
== References == {{Reflist}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Boothby, Penelope}} Category:People from Ashbourne, Derbyshire Category:English artists' models Category:1785 births Category:1791 deaths Category:People from Lichfield Category:18th-century British women Category:Models from Staffordshire