Emma Crewe

Emma Crewe (1780–1850) was a "gifted" amateur artist. Along with Diana Beauclerk (1734–1808) and Elizabeth Templetown (1747–1823), she contributed designs in "Romantic style" to Josiah Wedgwood for reproduction in his studio in Rome. She was the daughter of John Crewe, 1st Baron Crewe and his wife Frances Crewe, Lady Crewe.

Crewe was criticised in Richard Polwhele's The Unsex'd Females, for having painted the Frontispiece to Erasmus Darwin's The Loves of the Plants: "There is a charming delicacy in most of the pictures of Miss Emma Crewe; though I think, in her "Flora at play with Cupid," … she has rather overstepped the modesty of nature, by giving the portrait an air of voluptuousness too luxuriously melting."

Family

She married in 1809 Foster Cunliffe-Offley. Following the death of her father, Emma became the guardian of her youngest niece Annabella Hungerford Crewe, the daughter of her only brother, John Crewe, 2nd Baron Crewe, who was estranged from the family. Emma and Annabella lived together until Emma's death on 15 February 1850, dividing their time between London and Madeley Manor in Staffordshire and travelling extensively on the continent after the death of Foster Cunliffe Offley in 1832.

After Emma's death Annabella erected a fountain in her aunt’s memory in Madeley, Staffordshire and donated the piece of land on which it stood to the poor to use as allotments. The allotments and memorial still survive on Manor Road in Madeley. In 1851 Annabella married Richard Monckton Milnes, 1st Baron Houghton.