Victoria Marjorie Harriet Paget, Marchioness of Anglesey (néeManners; 20 December 1883 – 3 November 1946) was a British writer on art, an illustrator, and a member of the peerage.
In 1920, she coauthored (with art historian G.C. Williamson) a study of the neoclassical painter Johan Zoffany that is considered the first in-depth study of the artist. Johan Zoffany, R. A.: His Life and Works 1735–1810 was published in a limited edition of 500 copies, privately printed.[2]
She and Williamson also cowrote a study of the painter Angelica Kauffmann, one of only two women artists who were founding members of the Royal Academy of Arts (RA). Angelica Kauffmann, R.A.: Her Life and Her Works (1924) was prompted by the discovery in the RA archives of a manuscript in Kauffmann's handwriting, written in Italian and previously untranslated, which gives an account of Kauffmann's paintings post-1781.[3][4] Manners and Williamson wrote that this enabled them to "come to certain definite conclusions regarding many pictures hitherto ascribed to other artists."[4] They included numerous reproductions in both color and black-and-white on the grounds that prior books on Kauffman had presented inadequate reproductions of her paintings.[4]
Among her other books is one on the portrait and genre painter William Peters. She also wrote articles on art for magazines like The Conoisseur.
Manners illustrated Alicia Amherst's London Parks and Gardens (1907), which is considered the first serious and deeply informed book on London's open spaces.[5]
^Treadwell, Penelope. Johan Zoffany: Artist and Adventurer. Paul Holberton, 2009.
^Findlen, Paula, Wendy Wassyng Roworth, and Catherine M. Sama. Italy's Eighteenth Century: Gender and Culture in the Age of the Grand Tour. Stanford University Press, 2009, pp. 396–97.
