Wray, Mary, Mrs (McKechnie Section 1)

Recorded by Jackson (Dictionary). Fuller information is given by Mrs Peggy Hickman in an article, 'Family Portraiture in Silhouette', Country Life, 29 November 1973.

Mary Wray was the elder daughter of Robert Darell, of Richmond, Surrey, who was descended from a well-established family of good standing which had at one time owned Littlecote House, near Hungerford. During the eighteenth century the families of Darell, Jeffreys, and Wray were closely linked through marriage. Mary married Daniel Wray in 1758 and her younger sister married their cousin, the Reverend J. J. Jeffreys. in 1761.

Daniel (who, born in 1701, was considerably older than Mary) was the son of Sir Daniel Wray, a retired London soap-boiler who was knighted in 1707, at which time he was High Sheriff of Essex. Daniel graduated at Queen's Coll., Cambridge, as Bachelor of Arts in 1722 and as Master of Arts in 1728. At the age of twenty-seven he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society; in 1740 he was elected a Fellow of the Society of Arts. He published many articles on antiquarian and other subjects, and was obviously a man of wide knowledge. The young couple's first home was in King Street, Covent Garden; then they moved to Duke Street, Soho. They later took a country house in Richmond. Wray died in 1784 and his obituary notice appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine in that year. Mary Wray survived him until 1803.

Mrs Wray was one of the early profilists. Mrs Hickman illustrates some interesting family group silhouettes by her, at least two of which date from as early as 1766. One shows her father and her husband, with members of the Jeffreys family; the portrait of her husband on this example is the same as the better known profile illustrated in this Section, but faces in the opposite direction. Three other group profiles show the Darells and the Jeffreys in interior settings.

Mrs Wray cut profiles of many well-known people. One of the best known (of Thomas Gray. taken in 1772) shows the poet seated, with a book on his knees. Other sitters include Sir Joseph Banks (the scientist), Mrs Mary Delany (the diarist), David Hume, Pasquale Paoli (the Corsican general and patriot), James Bruce (the African explorer), Benjamin West, Thomas Sandby, Douglas John (Bishop of Salisbury), General James Murray (Governor of Canada), David Garrick, William Heberden (1710-1801, the physician), Sir William Herschel (the English astronomer) and James Watt.

The silhouettes of these sitters were noted by Jackson among a collection of 150 examples owned by Mrs Dorothea Cosset. I have been told by a member of the Gosset family that this collection has since been dispersed. Since Mrs Wray produced much of her work in the 1760s. she was working at the same time as W. J. Jolliffe, but it seems that more of her work than of his survives from this decade.

It seems likely that Mrs Wray was a professional artist, but it is possible that she was a gifted amateur. As the wife of such a well-known figure as Daniel Wray. she would have moved among the wide circle of her husband's distinguished friends and acquaintances. These may well have included the people listed above, who might have sat to her as friends would sit to an amateur, rather than as eminent figures sitting to a professional.

Mrs Wray was probably a gifted freehand cutter. There is no evidence that she produced bust-length work, although she may have done so. The family groups of the Darells, Wrays and Jeffreys are soundly composed, showing indoor scenes, with the figures cut in full-length in plain black. Some groups show a looped curtain' decorated with tassels, on the right-hand side of the picture at the top. It is possible that the fine lines on the furniture in these examples were drawn with a quill. Most of these silhouettes show, on the left-hand side, a projecting bracket, with an ornament, placed where F. Torond (see Section Two) would often paint a vase of flowers. The figures are set on a plain black base which is shallower than that seen in the work of Mrs M. Brown (q.v.), a cutter of interior group silhouettes who worked about twenty years later. The furniture in these groups is of interest, typical as it is of the 1760s. One group is recorded as measuring 16 x 24 in. These pieces can be distinguished from Mrs Brown's work by the costume of the sitters, which conforms to earlier fashions; bag-wigs, round caps and Pulteney caps can all be seen on them, and children are sometimes shown wearing leading strings. To summarize: the key points which would lead one to attribute an unsigned group silhouette to Mrs Wray are the projecting bracket on the left (and/or the looped curtain on the right), the narrow black base and the costume of the 1760s. The narrow black base is also a feature of Mrs Wray's full-length silhouettes of single figures.

It seems unlikely that Mrs Wray used trade labels. She appears to have signed some of her work. One of the family pieces mentioned by Mrs Hickman showed faintly the names of the Jeffreys and Darells on the back, and was positively identified as Mrs Wray's work because the well-known silhouette of Daniel Wray was among the figures; other pieces were identified by comparison.

Ills. 629. 630