Anne Killigrew, the artist who painted ‘Venus Attired by the Graces’ in the Falmouth Art Gallery collection, was a pioneering painter and poet of the Restoration Court. Killigrew was a great favourite of the future queen, Mary of Modena, who was a patron of her work and encouraged her talent. At a time when few women had access to education, Anne Killigrew began a promising career as one of the foremost artists of her generation.

She came from a family steeped in the court. Her uncle, Thomas, was a renowned playwright, a friend of Charles II and manager of the King’s Theatre, and was one of the key figures in licensing women actors. Her father, Henry, was the Protestant almoner to the Catholic James, Duke of York. Her aunt, Elizabeth, had been one of Charles II’s mistresses in exile and mother of one of his many illegitimate children. They were restoration courtiers in the truest sense of the phrase. Their origins, by contrast, were rather murky, for the Killigrews were an ancient Cornish family, who had ruled the south- western shores of Falmouth as pirates for two centuries.

In this talk, Dr Breeze Barrington will discuss the life and legacy, of this brilliant young woman who, though she died tragically young at just 25 during an outbreak of smallpox, achieved great things.