Plas Newydd’s poetics of exchange: portraiture, poetry, and the intermediality of eighteenth-century gift culture

Abstract

This article uses eighteenth-century correspondence and daily writing to unpack the complex networks of emotional, artistic, and poetic exchange that surrounded Plas Newydd, the home of the so-called ‘Ladies of Llangollen’, Sarah Ponsonby and Lady Eleanor Butler. It focuses on the gifting of a printed copy of George Romney’s painting Serena Reading (1782) to the women by the poet Anna Seward, viewed by the trio as a portrait. Using an interdisciplinary and microhistorical approach, the article places the image within two contexts: first, within an intricate display of gifted portraits at Plas Newydd; and second, in relation to Seward’s poetry. In so doing, it argues for the centrality of the cultural, emotional, and intellectual process of exchange as a way for understanding the emotional life of the period. By focusing on the literary lives of this portrait-object, the article also demonstrates the necessity of an intermedial approach to eighteenth-century visual and material culture, highlighting the productive possibilities of using textual sources to consider long-lost artworks.