Emma Crewe

Emma Crewe, "Flora at Play with Cupid." Frontispiece to Erasmus Darwin's The Loves of the Plants

Emma Crewe (active 1787 – 1818) was a "gifted amateur artist" who, along with Diana Beauclerk (1734–1808) and Elizabeth Templetown (1747–1823), contributed designs in "Romantic style" to Josiah Wedgwood for reproduction in his studio in Rome. She was criticised in Richard Polwhele's The Unsex'd Females, for having painted the Frontispiece to Erasmus Darwin's The Loves of the Plants: "There is a charming delicacy in most of the pictures of Miss Emma Crewe; though I think, in her "Flora at play with Cupid," … she has rather overstepped the modesty of nature, by giving the portrait an air of voluptuousness too luxuriously melting."^[1]

Notes

1. Richard Polwhele, The Unsex'd Females: A Poem, Addressed to the Author of the Pursuits of Literature. London: Printed for Cadell and Davies, in the Strand. 1798. (Etext, UofVirginia)

Resources

• Reilly, Robin. “Wedgwood, Josiah (1730–1795).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. 8 May 2007.