Dominic Winter Auctions
Lot 231a
English School. Portrait of Mary Ann Peloquin (1706-1778) of Queen Square, Bristol, circa 1740s, three quarter length oil on canvas portrait, slight surface wear, relined, 127 x 103cm (50 x 40.5ins), gilt moulded frame with name plate of sitter at foot, glazed, Frost & Reed Ltd. framer's label to versoIn the will of Mary Ann Peloquin dated the 27th April 1768, she gave to the mayor and aldermen of the city of Bristol £19000 upon trust. The income from which was to be divided annually on St. Stephen's day amongst various worthy individuals of Bristol including 38 poor men and 38 poor women, 'all of whom to be free of the said city of Bristol, and housekeepers therein, not receiving parochial alms, and not occupying or keeping public or ale houses'. Money was also awarded to 20 poor widows and single women, and such 10 poor men, inhabitants of the parish of St. Stephen, not receiving parochial alms. The Charity Commission register records that the Mary Ann Peloquin Charity ceased to exist in 1997. St. Stephen's Parish Church, Bristol contains a fine marble wall monument erected by Mary Ann in the memory of her brother David Peloquin (died 1766, aged 66), also an alderman of the city. At the base of the monument there is a bronze panel which records that Mary Ann Peloquin died in 1778, the last of a family who had settled in Bristol in the 17th Century, and benefactor to various charities. Their father Stephen Peloquin a Huguenot refugee arrived in Bristol, aged about 20, in the mid 1680's, bringing much of his family's portable wealth with him. Stephen was a highly successful merchant becoming one of the wealthiest citizens of Bristol in the 18th century. His wealth was made largely through the tobacco trade, which depended in part on slave labour. Stephen shared a trading consortium with his brother-in-law Augustus Jay of New York. After his death Mary Ann lent the family home in Queen Square to Josiah Tucker, who was a supporter of the anti-slavery campaigners. By the mid 1700s the wealthier Huguenots attended St Stephen's and St Nicholas's churches in Bristol's old merchant quarter, where a number of their memorials can still be seen. See The Bristol Charities, being the Report of the Commissioners for inquiring concerning Charities in England and Wales, edited by Thomas John Manchee, Bristol: T.J. Manchee, 1831, volume 1, pages 106-110.(1)
![After Frederic Sackrider Remington (1861-1909). Trooper of the Plains, 1909 [but later], bronze sculpture, with brown patina,](https://cdn.globalauctionplatform.com/ebc2c2da-c19a-41a8-a0c2-aa8800c54d6f/8d0a28dc-3e12-4d31-b07f-aa880116d509/468x382.jpg)
