A fine late Georgian portrait in oils of the ‘The Merry Widow of New Cross’, Mrs Elizabeth Stansfield, wife of the London and Halifax tobacco merchant Timothy Stansfield of the Stansfields of Field House, Sowerby.

Mrs Stansfield is shown dressed fashionably en Turquerie, in a turban with silk robes and ermine trim, perhaps an oblique acknowledgement of her wealth derived from tobacco or her city connections.

She is painted in manner of Thomas Phillips RA.

Elizabeth Stansfield née Legh was born in Halifax, Yorkshire, the niece of the Rev George Legh vicar of Halifax, Prebendary of York.

In 1782 she married the Yorkshire and London tobacco merchant Samuel Milne and upon his death in 1805 engaged herself to his surviving business partner Timothy Stansfield, who she also outlived. With him she built Field House a fine mansion in New Cross, Surrey, which was demolished in 1875 to build Haberdashers’ Aske’s Hatcham College.