The Hon. Violet Monckton

The Hon Violet Frances Monckton-Arundell was born in 1880, the only daughter of the 7th Viscount Galway. This portrait was presumably painted to mark her ‘coming out’. On its exhibition at the Royal Academy the picture was considered noteworthy if a little ‘hard’. In 1904 the sitter married Lt-Col GHJ Skeffington Smyth who had distinguished himself in South Africa and who would do so again in World War I. She died at Serlby Hall, near Doncaster in 1930.