Introduction
Anne Mee, née Foldsone (1765–1851) was a fashionable English miniature painter of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Life
The eldest child of John Foldsone, she was educated at Madame Pomier's school in Queen Square, Bloomsbury, London. She began to paint at age 12, with tuition from George Romney, and after her father died in 1784, did so to support her family.
Anne Mee exhibited occasionally at the Royal Academy between 1815 and 1837. She died at Hammersmith, 28 May 1851.
Works
As Miss Foldsone, she received royal and aristocratic patronage; and Horace Walpole, in his letters to Mary Berry of 1790–1, mentioned that she was at Windsor, painting the princesses. The Prince Regent gave Anne Mee employment in painting portraits of fashionable beauties, and many of these pictures went to Windsor. Some of her portraits were engraved for the Court Magazine, La Belle Assemblée, and similar periodicals. In 1812 she started a serial publication, Gallery of Beauties of the Court of George III, with her own portrait at the front, but just one number was issued.
Family
Anne Foldsone married Joseph Mee, an Irish barrister from Armagh, in 1793; they had six children. A son, Arthur Patrick Mee, practised as an architect, and exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1824 to 1837.