The Walpoles, The Grand Tour & the Country House.

Father, Son & Houghton Hall

On returning from the Grand Tour Horace Walpole discovered that he was now keeper of his father’s art collection. Though the son had become estranged from the father, the interest in pictures would bring them closer together in the latter’s years of retirement. The strain was due to Sir Robert’s neglect of his son for the world of politics where he was Prime Minister; so Horace found that he was now custodian of the Premier’s collection. Part of Walpole’s “duties” was to oversee the removal of pictures from Downing Street and his father’s other London residences to Houghton Hall, Norfolk, the country seat of the Walpoles. Here Walpole Jnr helped to design the picture galleries and compile a catalogue of his father’s collection (1743-47). A letter to the English Ambassador to Florence, Horace Mann, contains information that Horace is building a new gallery in a part of the house that was previously a greenhouse. As Brownell points out “since the majority of Robert Walpole’s pictures had been collected during the two decades following Walpole’s birth in 1717, the Houghton collection amounts to the nursery of his taste in the arts.”[1] So what does Sir Robert’s collection reveal about the Walpole’s tastes? To investigate that one has to become familiar with Horace’s catalogue of the collection, Aedes Walpoliane, as well as the destiny of the collection- to be sold to Catherine the Great in 1779. There is also the question of the father and son’s purpose in forming and curating this collection which would become “the nucleus of the Hermitage.”[2] Were they interested in the aesthetic and/or intellectual qualities of painting or did the Walpole collections serve another purpose.

William Hogarth and James Thornhill, Speaker Arthur Onslow Calling upon Sir Robert Walpole to Speak in the House of Commons, 1730, oil on canvas, 127 x 99 cm, NT, Clandon Park, near Guildford, Surrey.

Jonathan Richardson and John Wooton, Portrait of Sir Robert Walpole, 1727, oil on canvas, Private Collection.

View of Houghton Hall from the air.

Sir Joshua Reynolds, Portrait of Horace Walpole, 4^th Earl of Orford (1717-1797), c. 1756-7, oil on canvas, 127 x 101 cm, National Portrait Gallery, London.

Collection & Display. Sir Robert Walpole Collects Art.

The point of departure for anybody studying the collecting habits of Sir Robert Walpole is 1722 when the foundations of Houghton Hall were laid due to the sizeable sums of money he made in the South Seas. Though there is some evidence to place him in the sale room about 1717, Sir Robert’s collecting habits become more visible when he employs artists to buy pictures on his behalf. One of these, Charles Jervas (1675-1739) painted about a dozen portraits of the Walpole family, referred to by the son as “wretched daubings.” Though unsuccessful at taking Raphael drawings out of Italy, Jervas did manage to extract paintings by Carlo Maratta (1625-1715) who was one of Sir Robert’s favourite painters to whom he dedicated an entire room at Houghton. One of the most famous pictures was Maratta’s Judgement of Paris brought back from the Grand Tour by Sir Robert’s son Edward in 1722. The other important Maratta was the Portrait of Pope Clement IX removed from Downing Street, and deemed important enough to be written about by the English connoisseur George Vertue who thought Sir Robert’s portrait was the original (Vatican), though copies were known. Maratta’s portrait is not of the calibre of Velasquez’s Portrait of Innocent X which was undoubtedly the model for it, but it is considered the nearest thing he produced to a masterpiece.[3] In 1723 Sir Robert bought no less than fourteen full-size Van Dyck portraits including the Portrait of the Duke of Wharton (£1,500), though they did not meet with the approval of Vertue.Much to the distaste of English connoisseurs, Sir Robert owned a series of four market scenes by the Flemish painter Franz Snyders which seem to have been regarded as furniture rather than art works in themselves. For those who believe the debate ignited by the NT’s Director-General, Helen Ghoosh about wether the visiting public should see paintings in the midst of furnishings is recent, a  look at the response of George Vertue will show that the issue of paintings as art/paintings as furniture was alive in the early 18^th century. On inspecting the hanging of the Snyder scenes, Vertue felt compelled to criticise the use of the decorative effect which worked against the artist’s original idea of how the market scenes should be seen. Vertue was by no means the only critic of the Houghton hanging, as can be seen in the remarks by his patron Edward Harley in 1713.[4]

Carlo Maratta, the Judgement of Paris, on the floor at Houghton during restoration.

The Maratta Room reconstructed at Houghton Hall.

Carlo Maratta, Portrait of Pope Clement IX, 1669, oil on canvas, 145 x 116 cm, Hermitage, St Petersburg.

Velasquez, Head of Pope Innocent X, c. 1650, Oil on canvas, Hermitage, St Petersburg.

Frans Snyders, Game Stall, 1618-21, Oil on canvas, 207 x 341 cm, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.

Between Italy & Norfolk: Cataloguing Houghton’s Collection. 

As a model for a catalogue of a grand house Walpole chose an appropriate one: the Barberini’s Aedes Barberinae of 1642. As Francis Haskell says, this was “a lavishly illustrated volume…published with an ample, though somewhat generalized account of its contents.”[5] Walpole’s counterpart had no less ambition since it was designed like the Barberini to celebrate the nobility of a distinguished  family: the pictures were considered “panegyrics on your [Sir Robert’s] nobility,” as well as proclaiming with no little pride the magnificence of Houghton Hall.[6] The Aedes Walpolianae was supplemented by Horace’s “Sermon on Painting” (1742) and an estate poem by his Cambridge tutor, John Whalley which through orotund verse escorts the visitor across the Norfolk countryside to Houghton and introduces the picture collection there. Opinions about the Aedes Walpolianae are divided, but Brenall points out that there is little art criticism in it and that it “is not the work of an art critic, but of a courtesy-book gentleman who returned from the Grand Tour with a disgust for European connoisseurs, sceptical of the art trade, convinced that Italian art collections were degenerate and decaying,” not all the appropriate pursuit for a respectable M.P. who should look upon artists with condescension.[7] Sir Robert’s country house with its art and statuary should be seen as an extension of his political activities and ambitions. It was entirely fitting that an aristocrat and the Prime Minister of the land should live in such a splendid residence surrounded by the trappings of culture. And then as now, philistinism can co-exist with art and literature; like recent prime ministers, a privileged education does not always open the eyes and mind to the beauties of art. Sir Robert’s favourite painter Maratta is the kind of artist an undemanding patron little versed in the history of art might select, halfway between boring and moderately interesting. But the father’s limited tastes are nothing compared to his son whose opinions on art would today be dismissed as unconscionable and absurd. A perusal of Horace Walpole’s catalogue reveals that he was outspoken, and probably deliberately provocative in his criticism of the Italian schools of painting. Walpole especially reserves his ire for the Florentine school that is criticised for “hard drawing” though Leonardo is exempt. Walpole is less hard on the French School which was represented by four painters at Houghton Hall: Eustache Le Sueur is admired, though he is criticised for his folds which are “mean and unnatural.” His great colleague Poussin though praised as “a perfect master of expression and drawing” is criticised because “the proportion of his figures is rather too long.” Walpole must have had in mind the monumental Holy Family which hung over the chimney in the Embroidered Bed Chamber. Claude and Gaspar Poussin are spared with the latter dubbed “the Raphael of landscape painting.” Predictably, the Dutch and Flemish painters (with the exception of Rubens) are banished from Walpole’s empire of taste. Surprisingly, Anthony Van Dyck is lambasted for a “want of beauty.”  

Title page to Aedes Walpoliane, first published 1747.

Anthony Van Dyck, Portrait of Sir Thomas Wharton, 1636-39, Oil on canvas, 217 x 128 cm, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.

Nicolas Poussin, The Holy Family with St John and St Elizabeth, oil on canvas, 172 x 133.5 cm, Hermitage, St Petersburg.

Peter Paul Rubens, The Stone Carters, c. 1620, oil on canvas, 86 x 126.5 cm, Hermitage, St Petersburg.

David Teniers the Younger, The Kitchen, 1646, Oil on canvas, 171 x 237 cm, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.

 The Caprices of Collecting: Art at Strawberry Hill  

Thanks to an on-line reconstruction of Walpole’s collection at Strawberry Hill by Yale University we can get an immediate impression of the contents of his collection. It is eclectic to say the least: old masters such as Flemish and French paintings, statuary like his Roman Eagle (installed in his library), prints, objet d’ art, books, portfolios, chairs, lamps etc. As we shall see though, Walpole’s overriding preference was for portraits, mainly English, such as the lesser-known John Astley who painted the portrait of Sir Horace Mann, first port of call for English milordi on the Grand Tour in Florence; Richard Bentley who drew Walpole’s picture gallery and was painted by Eccardt who did Walpole’s own portrait; Reynold’s more famous portrait of Walpole as well as Sir Joshua’s elegant portrait of the Ladies Waldegrave; but in contrast to this eighteenth-century amplitude, one also finds a few graceful miniatures by the likes of Hilliard, Holbein, and other exponents of Elizabethan English painting. This is not surprising as Walpole had a taste for historical portraiture such as pictures of Henry VIII, Catherine de Medici, and Charles II who the collector said he had met in a dream! In this dream, which as Brenall says was reminiscent of the atmosphere in Walpole’s Gothic novel The Castle of Otranto, the gallery as in Bentley’s sketch appeared before his eyes; portraits such as Richard II came to life and greeted the dreamer-collector. There were some problem paintings including the intriguing Portrait of a Marriage (library) by an unknown Flemish renaissance master, which Walpole insisted showed the marriage of Henry VI, an identification received with scepticism by Vertue and completely overturned in the nineteenth-century. Apart from portraits there were other genres represented: a bacchanal by a follower of Poussin (Round Drawing Room), now in Washington.[8] Last but not least, in the Tribune or Cabinet, could be found an enigmatic painting of an elegant couple in parkland, La Boudeuse (“A Capricious Woman”) by Watteau. The word capricious could stand for Walpole’s attitude to collecting art; If ever a collection was assembled according to the whims and fancies of a single individual, this was it.

Strawberry Hill, Twickenham, London.

John Carter, View of the Library at Strawberry Hill, 1788, watercolour, The Lewis Walpole Library.

Richard Bentley, “Sketch of the Gallery at Strawberry,” c. 1759, grey and brown wash on laid paper, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

Unknown Flemish Master, Marriage of a Saint: The Marriage of Henry VI, c. 1475-1500, oil on wood panel, 94.5 x 88.6 cm, Toledo Museum of Art.

Francois Clouet, Portrait of Catherine de Medicis & her Children: Charles IX, Henry III, duke d’ Alençon and Marguerite of Navarre, 1561, oil on canvas, 198.1 x 137.2 cm, Private Collection.

Jean Antoine Watteau, A Man and Woman in a Landscape, (“La Boudeuse,”), oil on canvas, 42 x 34 cm, Hermitage, St Petersburg.

Walpole, Woburn & the Portrait.

Horace Walpole visited many stately homes, and therefore had a good idea of the collections of the land. He would keep abreast of aristocratic deaths resulting in sales, and managed to acquire art this way especially if Strawberry’s “Gothic eye” were to look favourably upon the desired art object. The “Prime Minister of Taste” was also in demand as a cataloguer of other collections, and one of these was the magnificent gallery of portraits at Woburn Abbey, seat of the Dukes of Bedford. According to the late Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures Oliver Millar, the collection of portraits at Woburn ranked with the collections at Althorp, Petworth and Welbeck, even despite some of it being sold at Christie’s in 1951.[9] The earliest Woburn picture lists were compiled by Vertue in 1727, and Walpole himself visited Woburn in 1751 and drew up a long list of pictures which served as a foundation for Waagen who visited in 1835. Later, in his old age, and suffering from gout and other maladies, Walpole had to abandon his impetuous project of cataloguing the Woburn portraits. As Brenall says Walpole’s notes for this unfulfilled project demonstrate his method of “monumenting portraits” i.e., by building up a picture of the painted person from an ensemble of sources from which he gleaned facts about their character, marriage, family and other factors. Walpole was very protective of his portraits. When a visitor Anne Liddle removed a portrait of herself from the Breakfast Room at Strawberry Hill, its owner wrote a furious letter which throws some insight on his attitudes to this genre: “I was in a monstrous passion at your taking away your picture and so I am sure will my ghost be, if it is ever removed out of this blue room while poor Strawberry exists. One is an artificial being: I and my friends and this place compose but one idea in my mind, and it is lopping a limb to touch any of the constituent parts- so, how I should not have been angry, I don’t know.”

Hans Holbein, Portrait Miniature of Katherine Howard, Mary Tudor, Queen of France, sister of Henry 8^th, miniature, watercolour on vellum set in gilt metal frame, 5.3 cm, Trustees of the Ninth Duke of Buccleuch’s Chattels Fund.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sir Joshua Reynolds, Portrait of Lavinia Bingham. Vicountess Althorp, and Countess Spencer, 1782, oil on canvas, 29 x 24 ins, Althorp, Staffordshire.

View of portraits at Althorp. 

View of Woburn Abbey.

William Larkin, Frances Howard, Countess of Somerset, 17^th century England, oil on panel, 54.5 x 42 cm, Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire.

 

Slides.

1)      Sir Joshua Reynolds, Portrait of Horace Walpole, 4^th Earl of Orford (1717-1797), c. 1756-7, oil on canvas, 127 x 101 cm, National Portrait Gallery, London.[10]

2)      Jonathan Richardson and John Wooton, Portrait of Sir Robert Walpole, 1727, oil on canvas, Private Collection.

3)      John Wooton, Hounds and a Magpie, oil on canvas, 152 x 128 cm, Hermitage St Petersburg.

4)      View of Houghton Hall from the air.

5)      Title page to Aedes Walpoliane, first published 1747.

6)      Title page to Aedes Barberini, 1642.

7)      Carlo Maratta, the Judgement of Paris, on the floor at Houghton during restoration.[11]

8)      Maratta’s Judgement of Paris being lowered at Houghton Hall.

9)      Carlo Maratta, Portrait of Pope Clement IX, 1669, oil on canvas, 145 x 116 cm, Hermitage, St Petersburg.[12]

10)   Velasquez, Head of Pope Innocent X, c. 1650, Oil on canvas, Hermitage, St Petersburg.[13]

11)   John Hall, (after Carlo Maratta), Pope Clement IX, 1767, print, Harvard University.

12)   John Astley, Portrait of Horace Mann, English Ambassador in Florence, 1751, oil on panel, 49.5 x 36.8 cm, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.[14]

13)   Johann Zoffany, The Tribuna degli Uffizi, 1772-89, oil on canvas, 123.5 x 155 cm, Royal Collection. 

14)   Tribuna at Florence: Horace Mann and Thomas Patch group.

15)   The Maratta Room reconstructed at Houghton Hall.

16)   Carlo Maratta, Apollo Chasing Daphne, 1681, Oil on canvas, 221,2 x 224 cm, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels.

17)   William Hogarth and James Thornhill, Speaker Arthur Onslow Calling upon Sir Robert Walpole to Speak in the House of Commons, 1730, oil on canvas, 127 x 99 cm, NT, Clandon Park, near Guildford, Surrey.

18)   Eustache Le Sueur, The Exposition of Moses, 1640s, oil on canvas, Hermitage, St Petersburg.[15]

19)   Nicolas Poussin, The Holy Family with St John and St Elizabeth, oil on canvas, 172 x 133.5 cm, Hermitage, St Petersburg.[16]

20)   Peter Paul Rubens, The Stone Carters, c. 1620, oil on canvas, 86 x 126.5 cm, Hermitage, St Petersburg.

21)   Antwerp School, Rest on the Flight into Egypt, first half of 17^th century, oil on copper, 62.5 x 85.5 cm, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.[17]

22)   Anthony Van Dyck, Portrait of Sir Thomas Wharton, 1636-39, Oil on canvas, 217 x 128 cm, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.[18]

23)   David Teniers the Younger, The Kitchen, 1646, Oil on canvas, 171 x 237 cm, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.[19]

24)   Frans Snyders, Game Stall, 1618-21, Oil on canvas, 207 x 341 cm, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.[20]

25)   Murillo, Immaculate Conception, c. 1680, oil on canvas, 195 x 145 cm, Hermitage, St Petersburg.

26)   Strawberry Hill, Twickenham, London.

27)   Walpole’s Admission notice for Strawberry Hill.

28)   Richard Bentley, “Sketch of the Gallery at Strawberry,” c. 1759, grey and brown wash on laid paper, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.[21]

29)   John Giles Eccardt, Portrait of Richard Bentley, 1753, oil on canvas, 42.2 x 34.3 cm, National Portrait Gallery, London.

30)   George Vertue & Horace Walpole, 34 original drawings... from which engravings were made for Horace Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, 1st ed.]

31)   John Carter, View of the Library at Strawberry Hill, 1788, watercolour, The Lewis Walpole Library.

32)   1^St Cent A.D. Roman, Eagle on an Altar Base, eagle found in the gardens of Boccapadugli, sculpture, marble, 77.5 cm.[22]

33)   Unknown Flemish Master, Marriage of a Saint: The Marriage of Henry VI, c. 1475-1500, oil on wood panel, 94.5 x 88.6 cm, Toledo Museum of Art.[23]

34)   Orazio Samacchini, Catherine of Alexandria and St. James Major, Christ as a pilgrim, and saint Catherine, painting on white metal, 21.4 x 16 cm, Glasgow Museums.[24]

35)   Francois Clouet, Portrait of Catherine de Medicis & her Children: Charles IX, Henry III, duke d’ Alençon and Marguerite of Navarre, 1561, oil on canvas, 198.1 x 137.2 cm, Private Collection.[25]

36)   John Giles Eccardt, Portrait of Charles Churchill, Lady Maria Walpole and their Eldest Son Charles, c. 1755, oil on canvas, 66.7 x 50.8 cm, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

37)   Sir Joshua Reynolds, Portrait of the Ladies Waldegrave, Laura, Maria, and Horatia, oil on canvas, 143.5 x 168 cm, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh.[26]

38)   Jean Antoine Watteau, A Man and Woman in a Landscape, (“La Boudeuse,”), oil on canvas, 42 x 34 cm, Hermitage, St Petersburg.[27]

39)   John Carter, “Passage to the Gallery, and Interior of the Holbein Room at Strawberry Hill,”c. 1790, pen and ink and watercolour on wove paper, 35.4 x 25.8 cm.

40)   Hans Holbein, Portrait Miniature of Katherine Howard, Mary Tudor, Queen of France, sister of Henry 8^th, miniature, watercolour on vellum set in gilt metal frame, 5.3 cm, Trustees of the Ninth Duke of Buccleuch’s Chattels Fund.[28]

41)   Lucas Horenbout, Portrait Miniature of Anne Boleyn/Catharine of Aragon, c. 1532-33, watercolour on vellum, set in gold frame, 4.2 cm, diameter, Trustees of the Ninth Duke of Buccleuch’s Chattels Trust.

42)   View of portraits at Althorp.

43)   Sir Joshua Reynolds, Portrait of Lavinia Bingham. Vicountess Althorp, and Countess Spencer, 1782, oil on canvas, 29 x 24 ins, Althorp, Staffordshire.[29]

44)   View of Woburn Abbey.

45)   William Larkin, Frances Howard, Countess of Somerset, 17^th century England, oil on panel, 54.5 x 42 cm, Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire.

---

[1] Brownell, Prime Minister of Taste, 37.

[2] Brownell, Prime Minister of Taste, 37.

[3] See the comments in Johnstone and others, Vatican Splendour: Masterpieces of Baroque Art, Ottawa, 1986,

no. 12

[4] Cited in Brenall, Prime Minister of Taste, 41-42: “In the saloon are a great many fine pictures, particularly the famous Markets of Snyder, but I think they are very oddly put up, one is above the other and joined in the middle with a thin piece of wood gilt. It is certainly wrong because as these pictures of the markets were painted to one point of view, and to be even with the eye, they certainly ought not to be put one above another, besides that narrow gold ledge that is between the two pictures takes the eye and has a very ill effect.”

[5] Haskell, Patrons and Painters: Art and Society in Baroque Italy, (Yale University Press, 1980), 56.

[6] Brenall, Prime Minister of Taste, 46. For an on-line version of the Aedes Walpolianae follow this link.

[7] Brenall, Prime Minister of Taste, 48.

[8] The Nurture of Jupiter. Blunt (R 80) rejected it as a work by the so-called “Hovingham Master,” and Wright (no. A31) places it in his group of attributions since he considers it might be a “one-off” composition of the 1630s “much more akin to the mood and colour schemes of Guercino.” See also Anthony Blunt, "Poussin Studies XII: The Hovingham Master" Burlington Magazine (103 704 Nov., 1961): 454-461.

[9] Oliver Millar, “The Early Portraits of the Russells” in Woburn Abbey and its Collections, Apollo, 1965, 29-37, 29.

[10] From Yale web site: Provenance: Ragley Copy: Not Strawberry Hill Collection. Probably given by the sitter to his cousin, Francis Seymour Conway, 1st Marquess of Hertford; thence by descent. National Portrait Gallery Copy: Not Strawberry Hill Collection. Apparently painted for Grosvenor Bedford (1708-71), the sitter’s deputy as usher of the Exchequer , still in the Bedford family 24 December 1847 when Sir Robert Peel wrote to John Smith, dealer, declining to buy it; Lady Colum Crichton-Stuart; bt by 3rd Marquess of Lansdowne before the Grosvenor Charles Bedford sale of 1861; thence by descent until 1999 when acquired by private treaty sale from the Bowood Collection with assistance from the Heritage Lottery Fund, the NACF, and the Gallery’s Helen Gardner Fund.

[11] Acc to Walpole painted when 83 years old; criticizes the drawing of the Juno.

[12] Houghton (Maratta Room). Over the chimney; bt by Jervas from the Arnaldi Palace at Florence, part of the Pallavicini coll from which Sir Robert obtained many of his pictures.

[13] Cabinet at Houghton.

[14] From Yale web site: Provenance: 1752, given to Horace Walpole by Horace Mann; 1842, Strawberry Hill Sale, day 21, lot 42 bt John P. Beavan, Esq., £6.6.0 [with pair Portrait of Galfridus Mann]; 1950, February 1, Sotheby's, Lord Hastings Collection, lot 71 bt Thomas Agnew & Sons for W. S. Lewis, £280; The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

[15] Gallery at Houghton Hall.

[16] For more on Poussin’s Holy Families, follow this link. Seen in the Houghton collection by Vertue in 1739. In the Embroidered Bed Chamber at Houghton, Walpole describes it “Over the Chimney, the Holy Family large as Life. It is one of the most Capital Pictures in this Collection, the Airs of the Heads, and the draperies are in the fine taste of Raphael, and the Antique. Elizabeth’s Head is taken from a Statue of an Old Woman in the Villa Borghese at Rome, the colouring is much higher than his usual manner. The Virgin’s head and the young Jesus are particularly delicate.”

[17] Probably the picture called by Walpole “Morellio in the manner of Vandyke,” in the Carlo Maratta room; taken to Strawberry Hill.

[18] Houghton (The Marble Parlour).

[19] Houghton (Common Parlour).

[20] One of the “four markets” hung in the Gallery at Houghton.

[21] From Yale website: Provenance: Drawing commissioned by Horace Walpole; the album, “Drawings and Designs by Rich. Bentley,” assembled by Horace Walpole; 1842, Strawberry Hill Sale, day 8, lot 57 [listed]; 1842, Strawberry Hill London Sale, day 10, lot 1255 [sold] bt William Knight, Esq, £4.2.0; 1926, May, Spencer through Fletcher for W.S. Lewis, £210; The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

[22] From Yale web site: Provenance: Eagle excavated in 1742 in the gardens of Boccapadugli within the precincts of Caracalla's bath in Rome; 1745 Horace Walpole bt eagle with base for 100 zecchini (£50.0.0 and £25.0.0 for pedestal); arrived in England in 1747; 1842, Strawberry Hill Sale, day 23, lot 86, bt. Earl of Leicester, £210.0.0; 1854 March 25, Christie's, Property of J. D. Gardner, Esq., Bottisham Hall, lot 77, bt. Hickman, £556.10; 1935, Private Collection.

[23] From Yale web site: Provenance: Horace Walpole, paid £21.0.0; 1842, Strawberry Hill Sale, day 20, lot 25, bt Duke of Sutherland, £84; 1910 February-March, loaned to the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Massachusetts, by Gimpel & Wildenstein, NY, as a potential purchase. (as a ‘French primitive’); 1916, Edward Drummond Libbey; 1926, Toledo Museum of Art, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey.

[24] From Yale web site: Horace Walpole; 1842, Strawberry Hill Sale, day 13, lot 19 bt, J. M. Smith, £4.14.6, as Zucchero; 1843, June, John Smith, bt Archibald McLellan (1797-1854), £12, as Zucchero; 1854, Bequeathed to Glasgow Corporation by Archibald McLellan, principal founder of Glasgow Museums collection.

[25] From Yale web site: Provenance: Mr. Byde, Hertfordshire; bt Horace Walpole, £25.0.0; 1842, Strawberry Hill Sale, day 21, lot 89, bt Hull, Wardour-street, £90.6; Scarisbrick Collection; 1892 July 2, Christie's, Hollingworth Magniac Collection, lot 94, bt L.T. Linton; 1896 June 6, Christie's, lot 80 bt Sir Tollemache Sinclair, £283.10; [1980], Private Collection, UK.

[26] From Yale web site: Provenance: Commissioned by Horace Walpole, great-uncle of the sitters; 1842, Strawberry Hill Sale, day 21, lot 35, bt Earl Waldegrave, £577.10.0; bequeathed by Frances, widow of 7th Earl, to her 4th husband Chichester Fortescue, later Lord Carlingford; 1886, June, Lord Carlingford sold it to Agnew’s via Sir Francis Bolton; Agnew’s sold it to Daniel Thwaites of Blackburn, whose daughter Elma Amy married Robert Armstrong Yerburgh; 1952, November 21, Robert Daniel Thwaites Yerbury, 1st Baron Alvingham, sold it via Agnew’s to National Gallery of Scotland with help from National Art Collections Fund (NACF).

[27] From Yale website: “Provenance: Sir Robert Walpole (after 1726?); 1748, London Sale of Sir R. Walpole’s collection, day 2, lot 52, bt Horace Walpole, £3.3; 1842, Strawberry Hill Sale, day 13, lot 36 bt Emery, Bury Street, £40.19; 1852, May 24, Duc de Morny in Paris, bt Henri Didiér, £1,700 FF; 1856, January 22, de Férrol Collection, no.28. Purchased then or shortly thereafter by Count Paul S. Stroganoff of St. Petersburg. (later in the Stroganoff Gallery); 1922, Transferred to the State Hermitage Museum.

[28] From Yale web site: Provenance: Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Arundel Collection; Jonathan Richardson, the younger; Horace Walpole; 1842, Strawberry Hill Sale, day 14, lot 68, bt Conningham, Esq., £26.5.0; Walter Francis, 5th Duke of Buccleuch and 7th Duke of Queensberry (frame c4, later 1/4); by family descent.

[29] Identified by Walpole at the R.A. 1782 exhibition as one of [Reynold’s] “most enchanting portraits” as “Lady Althorpe,” daughter of one of Walpole’s favourite artists, Margaret Smith, Lady Luca. Lavinia Bingham was married on 6^th March 1781 to George John Spencer, Viscount Althorp.