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Louisa Plimer (1802-1864) was the eldest daughter of artist Andrew Plimer and Joanna Louisa Knight (1774-1861). One of four sisters, she was the only sibling to marry. This portrait probably shows her at around sixteen years of age, predating the version in the Cincinnati Art Museum which dates to circa 1820.

The provenance of the present portrait shows that it remained in the possession of the Plimer family and was noted as in the collection of the Plimer family when Williamson recorded it for his publication in 1903. This is an example of how portrait miniatures were treasured within families prior to the advent of affordable photography. In 1830, Louisa left the family home to marry a surgeon, John Scott, and the couple relocated to Edinburgh.[1]

Andrew Plimer painted several members of his immediate and extended family on numerous occasions. His consistent and homogeneous style can sometimes make it difficult to identify these family members and differentiate between them, as George Williamson notes:

“The very full expressive eyes which the Plimer girls all inherited from their mother… were very possibly the prototypes of the somewhat mannered treatment of those features adopted by Plimer. He had, as it were, become so accustomed to these large deep eyes at home that it evidently became at last a habit with him to endow with this trait of beauty other sitters than those of the family circle.”[2]


[1] Records show that the couple resided at 41 Albany Street, Edinburgh.
[2] G. C. Williamson, Andrew and Nathaniel Plimer, Miniature Painters, Their Lives and Their Works, London, 1903, p. 61