(1735 - 72), o. surv. s. of John Craster of Craster, Northumb.; G.Inn 1753; m. 1757 Olive Sharp (d. 1769); army officer, 2 Trp. Hse.Grenadier Gds.
1761 - 2 San Remo, Genoa (Nov. - Dec. 1761), Leghorn, Florence, Siena, Rome, Naples (Jan. 1762), Rome (Jun. - Jul.), Bologna
The Crasters travelled together to Italy; Olive Craster kept notebooks and (mostly undated) accounts.1 She listed craftsmen, artists and specialities, as at Bologna: 'sausages, gauses, oil cloth & Liquors made by Manudi the famous man, & a particular kind of lapdog, the hair very long & like silk but very dear'. Her accounts include payments for artificial flowers, sheet music, pins, snuffboxes, cameos, intaglios and essences, as well as two of the lapdogs.
In Rome in 1762 George Craster sat to Batoni in full regimentals (priv. coll.; Clark /Bowron 256) and in July 1762 as a pendant Nathaniel Dance painted Olive Craster with a pet squirrel on her wrist (priv. coll.).2 Dance had been apprehensive of this scheme: 'However, I had the courage to undertake it, and have had the good fortune to succeed better than my best friends expected'.3 The two portraits cost 61 scudi 5 paoli, with copies in miniature by signora Tibaldi at 32 scudi and 8 paoli (a scudo, it was noted, being worth 5 English shillings).
1. Sir Edmund Craster, Archeologia Aeliana, 4th series, 31[1953]:39. MS notebook of Olive Craster, 1761 - 2, priv. coll. 2. B. Skinner, Burl.Mag., 101[1959]:349. 3. Dance letters MSS (7 Jul. 1762).