Rose, Marchioness of Headfort – Orpen Print

Rose Boote was a Gaiety Girl — one of the chorus singers at the Gaiety Theatre on the Strand, London. Her father was a comedian from Nottingham. She was Catholic, from nothing, and by any measure of Edwardian society she should have stayed exactly where she was.

Instead, the fourth Marquess of Headfort — one of the most eligible Protestant aristocrats in Ireland, heir to 22,000 acres in County Meath — saw her on stage and refused to marry anyone else. They married in 1901. Queen Victoria reportedly commented. Society was scandalised, then fascinated, then gradually won over by the fact that they were, by all accounts, completely devoted to each other for forty years.

Orpen painted her in 1914, when she was thirty-six and the marriage had long since proven itself. She stands in the silver evening gown, diamond earrings, looking directly out. There is nothing apologetic about this portrait. It was first exhibited at the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition of 1915 — the same year Orpen painted Idina Wallace — and sold at Sotheby's London in 2012 for £577,250.

This archival giclée print is made on heavyweight fine art paper with fade-resistant inks, built to last.

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