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Anne
Mee

United Kingdom • 1765−1851
Mee, Anne (1765–1851), miniature painter, eldest child of John Foldsone [q. v.], was educated at Madame Pomier's school in Queen Square, Bloomsbury, where she gave early proofs of artistic talent. She began to practise when very young, and her father dying prematurely, she became the sole support of her family. Miss Foldsone received much royal and aristocratic patronage; and Walpole, in his letters to Miss Berry of 1790 and 1791, mentions that she is at Windsor, ‘painting portraits of all the princesses to be sent to all the princes upon earth,’ and complains that she will not complete commissions for which she has been paid, having (as he has discovered) a mother and eight brothers and sisters to maintain. She married Joseph Mee, a man who ‘pretended to both family and fortune, without being possessed of either’ (Edwards, Anecdotes of Painting, p. 110). The prince regent gave Mrs. Mee much employment in painting portraits of fashionable beauties, and many of these are now at Windsor. Some of her portraits were engraved in the ‘Court Magazine,’ ‘La Belle Assemblée,’ and similar periodicals, and in 1812 she commenced a serial publication, ‘Gallery of Beauties of the Court of George III,’ with her own portrait prefixed, but only a single number was issued. Mrs. Mee exhibited occasionally at the Royal Academy between 1815 and 1837. She died at Hammersmith, 28 May 1851, aged, according to the ‘Gentleman's Magazine,’ 76, but more probably over 80.
 
Mrs. Mee's early miniatures are well drawn and executed, but those of her later time, which are on a comparatively large scale, are meretricious in character and of poor quality. A memoir of her, with a portrait engraved by H. R. Cook, appeared in the ‘Lady's Monthly Museum,’ January 1814. She had a son, A. P. Mee, who practised as an architect, and exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1824 to 1837.
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