Mary Impey

Mary, Lady Impey (née Reade; 2 March 1749 – 20 February 1818) was an English natural historian and patron of the arts in Bengal. The wife of Sir Elijah Impey, the Chief Justice of Bengal, she established a menagerie in Calcutta and commissioned Indian artists to paint the various creatures. Her paintings were later taken to England and were examined by John Latham who named several new species from them in his supplement to the General Synopsis of Birds (1787).