Dorothy Boyle (née Savile) Countess of Burlington
Boyle [née Savile], Dorothy, countess of Burlington (1699–1758), portrait painter and caricaturist, was born in London on 13 September 1699 and baptized on 24 September at St James's, Piccadilly, the elder daughter of William Savile, second marquess of Halifax (1665–1700), and his second wife, Lady Mary Finch (bap. 1677, d. 1718), daughter of Daniel Finch, second earl of Nottingham and seventh earl of Winchilsea. At the age of eighteen Dorothy, with her younger sister Mary, inherited the Halifax estates and thus became a highly marriageable proposition. On 21 March 1721 she married the 'architect earl', Richard Boyle, third earl of Burlington (1694–1753).
Henceforward the couple's lives chiefly revolved around three houses: Burlington House, Piccadilly; Chiswick House, Middlesex; and Londesborough in the East Riding of Yorkshire. William Kent, painter, designer, and landscape gardener, shared their lives for nearly thirty years. Kent had responded to the announcement of Lord Burlington's engagement by hoping that Lady Dorothy's fortune would help to finance the redecoration of Lord Burlington's houses: 'I hope the vertu will grow stronger in our house & architecture will floresh more' (Harris, Palladian Revival, 70). He was not disappointed. Lady Burlington took a keen interest in design, articularly in the creation of the Burlingtons' new villa at Chiswick; she also shared her husband's love of music and the theatre. Husband and wife extended friendship and patronage to David Garrick over some six years. Lady Burlington, self-appointed chaperone of the Viennese dancer Eva Maria Veigel (Violette), ainted her portrait and arranged her marriage to Garrick, but he came to resent Lady Burlington's domination and their correspondence ended. Her friendship with Alexander Pope was more equable; Pope assisted her from 1732 in preparing the papers of her grandfather George Savile, marquess of Halifax ('the Trimmer'), for publication in 1750. She served for ten years (1727–37) as one of Queen Caroline's eight ladies of the bedchamber and received permission to copy portraits in the Royal Collection. Off duty she rode to hounds. Chiefly Lady Burlington took pleasure in portraiture. She was largely self-taught, having learnt by copying. Visiting urlington House in 1743 George Vertue observed that the 'great room' was 'adorned with many crayon painted heads—the works of her Ladyship mostly all of them Coppyd from excellent pictures'. Vertue assumed that Kent had 'instructed [her] in the Art of drawing & painting in crayons' (Vertue, Note books, 3.140) but Kent's contribution was chiefly in liberating Lady Burlington in the direction of informal pen and ink sketches. She quickly developed a liking for him, referring to him as Kentino or the 'little Signor'. They evidently drew frequently in each other's company, each using an energetic pen and ink line, which sometimes makes it difficult to distinguish the work of one from the other among drawings from the so-called Kent–Burlington albums at Chatsworth. Kent drew Lady Burlington painting in oils at her easel, seated in the garden room at Chiswick which he designed for her, and painting the double portrait of her daughters which is now at Hardwick Hall. Her chalk drawing of Kent seated at a table, sketching, is one of several impromptu sketches of interiors with figures; she seems not to have tackled landscape. Most of Lady Burlington's portraits, whether pencil studies or developed into oils, are of her daughters, the most accomplished being Lady Charlotte Boyle (c.1740–1745; Chatsworth, on long loan to Chiswick House). Otherwise, apart from a portrait in oil of Princess Amelia (uniquely signed 'D. Burlington/pinxt'), she asked only family and friends to sit for her. But, as Horace Walpole noted, she also had a 'talent for caricatura'—for catching swift likenesses, often sardonically inscribed, on whatever fragment of paper or card came to hand. About thirty of these survive, including a sketch of Alexander Pope playing cards and a study of Queen Caroline on her deathbed, later inscribed by Pope with irreverent verse. Lady Burlington also concocted an operatic caricature by combining figures taken from Marco Ricci and Joseph Goupy into a new composition, showing the castrato Farinelli singing a duet with the dumpy Francesca Cuzzoni, with the impresario Heidegger in the background in a rage; the result, etched by Joseph Goupy, was published in 1734. Two chalk drawings by Lady Burlington are in the British Museum (Dept. of Prints and Drawings).
Correspondence between Lord and Lady Burlington over the years suggests that their relationship was amicable; each was in the habit of addressing the other as My dear Child', while a letter from Lord Burlington to his wife (23 September 1735) declares that 'Hearing from you, is the most agreeable thing in the world to me'. In Jean-Baptiste Van Loo's portrait group The Third Earl of Burlington with his Wife and Two Daughters (1739; collection Trustees of the Lismore estate) Lady Burlington is depicted holding a palette of oil colours. Behind her is a black servant, almost certainly James Cambridge, of whose head she made a sensitive pencil study. The two daughters are Dorothy and Charlotte, only survivors into adulthood of a son and three daughters born to the Burlingtons between 1724 and 1731. Dorothy married Lord Euston in 1741, dying unhappily within a year; Lady Burlington's portrait of her from memory was engraved by John Faber jun., privately published for friends. The younger daughter, Charlotte, married (1749) William Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington, later fourt Duke of Devonshire, and died in 1754, leaving four children; it is through that marriage that material relating to Lady Burlington (including all drawings and correspondence mentioned here and not otherwise located) is at Chatsworth. Lord Burlington died in 1753, leaving everything to his countess for her lifetime. Overtaken by illness and solitude Lady Burlington fell to raging: Walpole reported to Seymour Conway on 19 September 1758 that 'she breaks out all over—in curses and blasphemies' (Walpole, Corr., 37.571–2). She died in her bedchamber in Chiswick House on 21 September 1758.
[Source: Judy Egerton, 'Boyle [née Savile], Dorothy, countess of Burlington (1699–1758)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). By permission of Oxford University Press].
