Mrs Sarah Bloye (1771-1847)

An oval miniature, unframed, in watercolour and gum arabic on ivory which is the pair to F9546 of Captain (later Rear-Admiral) Robert Bloye, the sitter's husband. She is shown almost half-length, turned to her right but looking toward the viewer against a similar sky background. She has hazel eyes and centrally parted dark brown hair, curled and just concealing her ears, of which only the left is just visible, with a coral pendant earring. A coral-coloured brooch also closes the top of a neck-high blue dress, with a high-waisted belt and a ruffed lace collar either belonging to the dress or an undergarment. Mrs Bloye was born Sarah Laird, possibly in Devon, where she married Lieutenant Robert Bloye RN at Stoke Damerel on 18 June 1801. They subsequently lived in his native county of Norfolk until 1846 when they moved to Southsea. She was reported in the 'Hampshire Telegraph' of 18 September 1847 as having been long in a 'delicate state of health' when her husband died suddenly on the night of Tuesday 14th, an event which produced a 'fit of apoplexy' and her own death from grief or shock within three or four hours at the age of seventy-six. This miniature was presumably painted at the same time as its pair, of her husband, around 1820. She was the maternal aunt, and her husband thereby uncle, of the naval surveyor Henry Laird Cox, for whose miniature (with that of his wife) see F9530 and F9608.
William Egley