Oil on canvas, 167.6cm by 121.9cm. The painting is unfinished.
The children, Sophia, Brownlow and Thomas were born to the marquess’s second wife, Sarah Hoggins, who died shortly after Thomas’s birth.
Sophia (1793-1823) was a talented artist who made very fine pen and ink drawings of the interiors and exteriors of Burghley.
Today these provide a marvellous record of the House as it appeared in the 19th Century.
She married the diplomat, Henry Manvers Pierrepont in 1818 and had one daughter.
Her brother Brownlow (1795-1867), became the 2nd Marquess of Exeter on his father’s death in 1804, at the age of nine, and her younger brother Thomas (1797-1873), became a soldier.
