Sir William Blake Richmond, RA, circa 1886, oil on canvas portrait of Australian beauty, Mrs Charles Rome, nee Hunter, daughter of Alexander Mclean Hunter of Victoria.  She was known as “the beautiful Miss Hunter” and is mentioned in the biography of the poet Adam Lindsay Gordon, in connection with the bush song “The Stockman’s Last Bed” which some have attributed to her.  

Portrait measures 35.5” high by 27.5” wide approximately) excluding frame.

Est.  £8,000 - £10,000

Provenance:  By direct descent to the present owner.

Maria Margaret Hunter, known by her immediate family as Meta, was born in Melbourne, Victoria in 1856, of Scottish parents who had emigrated to Australia as pioneer colonists in 1839. The Hunter family became well known in Victoria and the area where they settled became known as the Hunter valley.

In November 1877, Maria married an English settler, Charles Rome, who had amassed a great fortune in Australia after emigrating there with his brother, Thomas, in 1863.  Charles and Maria sailed to England in 1878 for the birth of their first child, Charles Leslie Rome, before returning to Australia in July 1879.  Early in 1882, Charles started to sell his land and property in Australia with the intention of moving, with his family, back to England. He sold Terrick station, a ranch of 836 square miles, along with 140,000 sheep, 230 horses and 100+ head of cattle for a “satisfactory sum” thought to be about £200,000. In May of the same year, he advertised two other stations in the Barcoo river district of Queensland, totalling 1040 square miles, with 200,000 sheep, 13,000 cattle and 250 horses accompanied by an announcement that he intended ‘shortly to be leaving for Europe’.

They returned to England some time prior to 1885 and purchased Compton Castle, in North Cadbury, Somerset as well as property in London. By 1887, they were becoming well known in London society and Maria sat for several artists, who, it is said, raved of her beauty.  The newspapers of the time reported that her portraits appeared in more than one of the London summer exhibitions of 1887.

Sadly, on a warm July evening of the same year, her husband, Charles, was found dead in his apartment at 43 Sloane Street, Chelsea.  He was aged only 44.  It is thought that he had committed suicide after learning that he had lost his entire fortune, which had still been invested in Australia, after severe drought had decimated the farming community. His brother, Thomas, inherited Compton Castle in Somerset, which was valued at £16,708.

It is unclear as to what became of his wife, Maria, and the children. They possibly returned to Australia but their eldest son, Brigadier Charles Leslie Rome DSO, who had been educated at Harrow, later became ADC to the Earl of Dudley, Governor General of Australia, in 1908.