(1742 - 1811) of Portavo, Co. Down; m. Maddalena Guardi [Magdalen Gardi] (d. 1785).
1792 - 4 Florence (Oct. 1792 - Oct. 1793), Rome (10 Oct. 1793 - 14 May 1794) [London by 20 Oct.]
Late in 1792 David Ker, a widower who had been married to a Venetian singer, went to spend nearly two years in Italy with his three young daughters, Sophia, Frances and Madelena, and their governess Mrs Sabonardi?re. They left Spa in September 1792 and the following month were in Florence, planning to settle for a year (29 Oct.).1 Robert Parker saw Ker in Florence in April 1793.2 In May 1793 Ker was asking for official introductions to the British ministers at Turin, Naples and Venice; in June he described the arrival of Prince Augustus and said that Florence was 'full of English, but mostly going to Switzerland, or homeward'. His three daughters sat to F.-X. Fabre (priv. coll.).
They arrived in Rome on 10 October and a week later (17 Oct.) Ker was offering his brother a choice of chimneypiece designs and proposing to sit for his portrait ('I must be taken in my bloom'); he was also pursuing two landscape commissions for his aunt from Gregorio Fidanza, 'the first Landscape Painter in Rome', who was teaching his daughter Sophie twice a week from 7 to 9 a.m. Sophie and her sisters were subject to a rigorous timetable; their lessons included languages, music, drawing, flower-making and perspective, practical geometry and architecture. Madelena played the violin 'an hour and a half a day', and Ker and their governess would also read Roman history to them in the afternoon - 'by this varying they are never tired and all is a perpetual lesson in the Language'. Ker wrote that he had made 'an Italian servant we had at Florence a very good English Cook', and they were living comfortably in Rome.
On 26 October Ker was discussing a Leonardo da Vinci with one Mr Siriaz[?]. On 21 December he said he had obtained 'by a channel & particular circumstances' a Raphael portrait 'in his best manner', adding that he was going to send 'most of my acquisitions to Ireland'. Mrs Flaxman saw Ker and his family in Rome in November and December 1793.3 Ker sat to Angelica Kauffman (priv. coll.) on 15 November, making the final payment for his portrait on 25 March 1794.4 During February 1794 Sarah Bentham dined with them on three occasions.5 In April 1794 Ker had drawn up a list of pictures for Messrs Webb & Holmes at Leghorn for shipment to Dublin or Belfast, otherwise to London: three cases 'prepared against sea water' to be shipped from Leghorn, with three from Rome and another 'containing a Scagliola table will soon follow' (11 May 1794). On 14 May they were setting off for Switzerland; they were still in Lausanne on 7 September, but back in London by 20 October.
1. Ker letters MSS (dates given in brackets). 2. Parker list MSS. 3. Mrs Flaxman jnl.MSS 2 (30 Nov., 19 Dec.). 4. Kauffman 1924, 164. 5. Bentham jnl.MSS (10, 13, 28 Feb.).