Frances Bunsen

Frances Bunsen, 1874

Mrs. Waddington, mother of Frances Bunsen, mother-in-law of Christian Charles Josias von Bunsen, Painting on ivory by August Grahl, 1831

Baroness Frances Waddington Bunsen (4 March 1791 – 23 April 1876) was a Welsh painter and author, the wife of Christian Charles Josias Bunsen, and the older sister of Lady Llanover.

She was born in 1791 at Dunston Park in Bedfordshire, one of the five daughters of landowner Benjamin Waddington, and later lived at "Tŷ Uchaf", Llanover, Monmouthshire. Her mother was a great niece of Mary Delany. Frances was a talented watercolour painter. Several of her pictures are owned by Newport City Council. On 1 July 1817 she married Baron Bunsen, who later became the German ambassador to Britain. After his death in 1860, she published a memoir of his life: A Memoir of Baron Bunsen, Drawn Chiefly from Family Papers, by His Widow, Frances, Baroness Bunsen (1868). She died at Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany in 1876.

Works

Paintings

• Swansea (1808)
• Hills beyond Crickhowell (1808)
• Monmouth (1810)
• Basaleg Church (1813)
• Tredegar Park (1813)
• Abergavenny Church (1838)
• Abercarn (1847)

Writings

• Memoir of Baron Bunsen (1868)
• Hare, Life and Letters of Frances, Baroness Bunsen (London, 1882)

External links

• Ask Cymru
• Watercolours by Frances Bunsen held on Gathering the Jewels
• Free scores by Frances Bunsen at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)
• "Bunsen, Frances, Baroness" . New International Encyclopedia. 1905.
• Richmond, J. M. (2015). Nine Letters from an Artist: The Families of William Gillard, Porphyrogenitus, ISBN 978-1-871328-19-6