SOURCE: Clayton, Ellen Creathorne. “Anne Killigrew.” In English Female Artists, Vol. I, pp. 59-70. London: Tinsley Brothers, 1876.

In the essay below, Clayton surveys Killigrew's life, family background, and her painting and poetry.

A beauty, a wit, a verse-writer, an agreeable painter, maid of honour to a royal duchess standing next the throne, almost perfect in character, sweet and gracious in her manner—such is a rough pen-and-ink outline of the charming Anne Killigrew.

The Killigrew family, now extinct, was of venerable Cornish extraction, ever distinguished for loyalty and for talent. They were connected with the royal house by the marriage of Mary, daughter of Sir William Killigrew, with Frederic of Zulestein, illegitimate son of Henry, Prince of Orange. The three sons of Sir Robert Killigrew, of Hanworth, were all remarkable men at Court. William, the eldest, had suffered much during the Civil War, “both in purse and person...