English: John Russell, R.A. (1745 - 1806)

Portrait of Sarah Bate, Mrs William Banks (1719-1804)

Pastel; signed upper right: J. Russell R.A. / pt 1790

597 x 443 mm.

Sarah Bate was the daughter of William Bate and his wife Arabella Chambers. She was a considerable heiress both on her father's and her mother's side. Her father owned Foston Hall near Derby, which had been bought by his father Richard Bate in 1679 from John Agard. Her maternal grandfather Thomas Chambers came from a family of substantial landowners in nearby Scropton. Her mother’s younger sister Hannah Sophia married Brownlow 8th Earl of Exeter in 1724, and it was through this connection that Sarah’s wedding to William Banks on 26th September 1741 took place in the chapel of Burghley House.

Sarah’s husband William Banks was a lawyer who served as MP for Grampound in Cornwall from 1741 to 1747. He had inherited estates at Overton from his grandfather William Hodgkinson, and briefly adopted his name before reverting to Banks when he inherited Revesby Abbey in Lincolnshire from his father in 1741. Sarah brought up her son Joseph and daughter Sarah Sophia in Lincolnshire, but following her husband's death in 1761 she moved to Turret House in Paradise Row in Chelsea, close to the Physic Gardens. Her two children moved out, finally settling in 32 Soho Square where Sarah joined them towards the end of her life, dying there aged eighty five.