Edith Corbet knew the Paget family when they were at the British Embassy in Rome in January 1880, where Gay’s father Sir Augustus Paget was the Ambassador, and Corbet (who was then Mrs Murch, and living in Rome) was painting murals in the embassy suites. Gay, who was 17, was Queen Victoria’s goddaughter (she had nearly 60 of these), and according to a lengthy profile in Tatler, ‘clever, bright, and beautiful …. Tall, slender, and graceful, with fair hair, fine straight features, and a voice and manner of much refinement.’ Gay met her future husband, Lord Windsor, in Rome at the same time; they married in 1883, and later became the Earl and Countess of Plymouth. Corbet exhibited our painting at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1881, her only picture there. It may be a sort of ‘coming out’ portrait, after she had been presented to the Queen in July 1880. She is wearing a fashionable Egyptian revival tiara made of clay beetles set in gold, probably designed by the firm of John Brogden (see the Brogden album of designs at the V&A – our thanks to Geoffrey Munn). Corbet exhibited a portrait of Gay’s mother Walburga, Lady Paget, at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1883, and another portrait of Gay there in 1887.