Isabel (Swinburne) and Thomas Crathorne

In this portrait, Thomas Crathorne leans forward to gaze at his wife’s drawing of Cupid Burning His Bow and Arrow, an allegory for the renunciation of love. The chair, which should have been occupied by Thomas, instead holds ledgers and estate documents. The significance of these items becomes clear when it is noted that Thomas died three years before the painting was made. Cotes’s portrait serves a double function: presumably commissioned by the widow as an expression of enduring fidelity to her husband, it also reinforces her authority as the administrator of her young son’s estate.