Martha Gunn, a portrait given to Brighton Museum by her descendants relatively recently.
Martha Gunn was a famous 'dipper', an operator of a bathing machine on Brighton beach. A bathing machine was a small room on wheels in which a bather could change clothes. The machine could be pushed into shallow water so hat the bather could enter the water with minimum exposure to onlookers.
Clearly this was a time ago, Martha lived and died in Brighton - 1726 - 1815 - and became famous because the Prince Regent (the future George IV) took to using her machine.
To Brighton came he,
Came George III's son,
To be bathed in the sea,
By famed Martha Gunn.
Her grave is in St Nicholas's churchyard, near the SE corner of the church, and there is a pub named after her on the Upper Lewes Road, Brighton. The pub recently commissioned a mural for a wall on the street, featuring Martha with a row of gulls, the nearest of which she is patting.
Its a great shame they couldn't get a better painter of faces! Though it seems the artist went to see the painting in the museum, and added a Brighton flourish with the Gay Pride scarf on her hat.
A detail from the mural, the real thing has more sea, beach and gulls.
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