John Vanderbank (British 1694-1739)

The auction features an impressive array of portraits. A particular highlight is Lot 56, this interesting full-length portrait by British artist John Vanderbank, depicting The Honourable John Spencer. From notes by art historian Monton Cundall, we know that this portrait was hung in the drawing room at Haynes Park in 1895, alongside the portrait of Spencer's wife Georgiana Carteret, also by Vanderbank and now in the collection of the Earl Spencer at Althorp. It is highly probable that these two works were commissioned by John Carteret, 2nd Earl Granville for the couple's marriage in 1732, and hung together as pendant works.

Unusually, the rich Hussar's uniform which Spencer is shown wearing, seems to have been chosen as Court fancy dress rather than to indicate a military position. Spencer was a politician and landowner rather than a military man and there does not appear to be any record of him serving with an Hussar regiment. Vanderbank's capability in recreating the rich materials and textiles of this exotic uniform gives the sitter an added gravitas and the size of the portrait gives additional swagger to an impressive composition.

The Honourable John Spencer was born on the 13 May 1708 and was the youngest son of Charles Spencer, 3rd Earl of Sunderland and his wife Anne Churchill, daughter of the 1st Duke and Duchess of Marlborough. John was only 7 when his mother died and he was consequentially bought up by his grandmother, the infamous Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough. In 1732, John Spencer succeeded his cousin, William Godolphin, Marquess of Blandford, as the Member of Parliament for Woodstock, a seat he held until his death in 1746. He is also listed as one of the founding governors for the Foundling Hospital, set up to educate and house deserted young children. On the death of his father, in 1722, he inherited vast swathes of land, notably the family estates in Northamptonshire, including Althorp, as well as already having the properties given to him by his grandmother, including Wimbledon Park. Shortly after he came into his inheritance, he married Georgiana Caroline Carteret, the third daughter and co-heir of John Carteret, 2nd Earl Granville.

John Spencer was a popular figure at Court and great friends with Frederick, Prince of Wales. Indeed, his portrait is also captured by the equestrian artist John Wootton in a series of works in the Royal Collection showing the Prince of Wales accompanied by courtiers whilst shooting and hunting. Spencer's position at Court was reflected in his appointment as the Ranger of Windsor Great Park, after the death of his grandmother in 1744, who held the position previously.

John Vanderbank was the son of John Vanderbank senior, the leading tapestry weaver in the country who supplied the Royal Family with tapestries and introduced the less formal chinoiserie style in textiles. After training under his father and the artist Jonathan Richardson, Vanderbank became one of the first pupils at Sir Godfrey Kneller's art academy in 1711, where he continued his training before founding his own academy in 1720. One of Vanderbank's earliest commissions was his 1719 portrait of the 3rd Duke of Marlborough (Government Art Collection, London), John Spencer's older brother, on horseback. This was such a success that other aristocratic commissions soon started to follow, including from King George II and Queen Caroline which cemented his position as a leading Court portraitist.

Arthur William Devis (British 1762-1822)

Two impressive works we have are double portraits of two boys by British artist Arthur William Devis (Lot 64). Arthur William Devis was a portrait painter known for his extensive travels around India in the late 18th century. He was particularly renowned for his portraits of children, as exemplified in the present pair of portraits of four brothers. The elder pair stand in an interior with a table globe and the younger of the two boys' points to India, indicating the family's connection with that country. The elder boys, engaged in learning about the world, have the gravity of approaching manhood. Their young brothers live still in a world of outdoor play and sunlight, and are depicted practicing archery in the shade of a huge tree. Both portraits are inscribed 'Miss Kensington' on the reverse of the frames. It is possible that the boys are members of the Kensington family who are recorded in Madras in the early nineteenth century.

Arthur William Devis led an adventurous life and in 1782 was 'appointed Draftsman by a private committee of the East India Company to pursue a voyage around the world' aboard the Antelope. He was wounded by arrows in New Guinea and shipwrecked off the Palau Islands in the Pacific. Devis reached Calcutta in 1785, hoping to make his fortune as a portrait painter. Handsome, charming and generous, he plunged into the extravagant, febrile world of Calcutta society, where East India Company officials lived with all the elegance of Europe and the glamour of the East. One of Devis's first sitters was the Governor-General of Bengal, Warren Hastings and he went on to paint Marquess Cornwallis Receiving the Hostage Prince of Mysore before Seringapatam: and The Finding of the body of Tippoo Sahib, The Sultan of Mysore. Devis returned to England in 1795, intending to publish his series of twenty-six paintings of Indian Manufacturers. He built up his reputation as a portrait painter, often executing commissions for families with connections to India.

Nathaniel Dance (British 1735-1811)

A local landmark to us in Berkshire is Englefield House. In this auction, we are delighted to be offering this work by Nathaniel Dance, which shows Powlett Wrighte (The Younger), standing before Englefield House (Lot 72). It is a charming example of a work executed in the mid-eighteenth-century tradition of the English country house conversation piece. It was presumably commissioned by the sitter or the sitter's family.

Powlett Wrighte Junior (1739-1779) was the son of Powlett and Mary Wrighte and the heir to Englefield House and its estate. His father died in 1741, when he was just two years old and the house and estates were left in trust for him until he turned twenty-one. The painting shows Englefield as it was in the mid-18th century, most likely around 1760, the year Wrighte turned twenty-one and came into full ownership of the house. This would have been a thoroughly plausible reason to commission a painting of himself, standing proudly in front of his country house of which he was now master. 

There is another almost identical version of the work, currently in a private collection, which is inscribed to the frame with details of the sitter, location and artist. The two pictures are contemporary with each other, and from the style of painting the hand is clearly the same. The only variants are some very slight differences in some of the trees and the painting offered here includes a dog in the foreground, which is omitted from the other version. Given that his mother, at this time was then the chatelaine of several large houses through her second marriage in 1745, and would have spent much of her time away from Englefield, it is plausible that she would have wanted a second version of the picture to hang in one of her other houses to remind her of the house where she lived before and to remind her of her eldest son, who was now the master there.

Since that time that house has been architecturally altered more than once - most significantly during the early 19th century when it was given some impressive 'Gothic' additions. The elevation shown in this picture, however, is largely still extant today and the positioning of the church to the viewer's right is similarly unchanged. The descendants of Powlett Wrighte are still the owners of Englefield House today.

Thomas Daniell R.A (British 1749-1840)

From English landscape artist Thomas Daniell, we have this beautiful view in the Koah Nullah (Lot 63). Thomas and his nephew William Daniell, are well know for their seven-year tour of India towards the end of the 18th century. From this they produced a series of works capturing local scenes for their European audience. 

In August 1788, Thomas Daniell began to plan a tour up-country, passing through Cawnpore, and then on to Agra and Delhi, before heading further north to Amroha and Najibabad. The rocky valley of the Khoh river, that leads into the Garhwal hills, was the route that the Daniells followed on the final outbound leg of their journey from Kotdwara to Srinagar in April 1789. Parts of the journey were perilous because of the difficult roads, and much of the terrain was unknown to the British. The Daniells were in fact the first Europeans ever to visit Garhwal. It was here that they captured this view. Described by the pair, 'The Koah Nullah [Khoh River] is a mountain stream that in the season of rain must be a furious torrent, but in the month of April was a delightful rivulet, that, sparkling in the sun, gave animation and beauty to the rude scenes through which it pursued its course.'

Much of the works produced by the Daniells during their time in India include buildings or ruins; both a reflection of their own artistic ideals, and of the idea that India itself was the scene of ancient civilisations. However, the foothills of the Himalayas presented the pair with the opportunity to paint pure landscapes. The present lot is not completely free of buildings, but the humble dwelling at its centre is quickly dwarfed and overshadowed by the sublime rugged mountains and spirited waters which surround it.

In the autumn of 1791, the pair of artists arrived back at Calcutta, having travelled many miles since their departure in August 1788. It is noted that Thomas Daniell returned with a collection of 150 works, with the Calcutta Gazette announcing a 'Lottery of pictures painted during the extended tour'. Although no catalogue of this lottery survives, it is likely that the present, unrecorded, lot, was one of the 150 works produced for this financial venture. If this is the case, we can date the work to circa 1790-1791 when the Daniells were working on pictures for the Calcutta Lottery.

Arthur Hughes (British 1832-1915)

Depictions of nuns proliferated in Victorian art. The opportunity for medievalism appealed to Victorian sensibilities but their popularity also speaks to the emergence of High Anglicanism and the conventual revival which had been cultivated by the Oxford Movement.

Highlighted here, we have Lot 137, 'The Convent Boat' by British artist, Arthur Hughes (1832-1915). Once described as a 'touching scene' by Evelyn Waugh, in a letter to Nancy Mitford, this work shows the emotional moment in which a young novice leaves her family for the convent. The ramifications of her decision are laid bare for the viewer. Dressed as a bride of Christ, the novice's austere clothing contrasts with the sumptuous garb of those standing on the river bank. While her family lament her departure, she holds a prayer book and looks away solemnly, appearing resolute in her choice. The deliberate negation of material wealth and familial or romantic ties was a recurrent theme in artistic and literary depictions of nuns. The works reveal a curiosity with autonomous female spaces and the eschewal of the secular world in favour of an interior, spiritual life. Indeed, we only see a small glimpse of the cloister she will be entering. The work invokes a harmonious vision of the pre-Reformation world. ⁠

Soft evening light descends over the trees and reflects serenely across the water. The convent walls, overgrown with dense ivy, suggest the institution's agedness, connecting it with England's spiritual heritage. When a larger version of this painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1874, critics praised Hughes' attention to organic detail and the romantic naturalism of the scene. One wrote that the picture provided the "double fascination of a scene that belongs both to the present and the past", whilst another lauded the "perception of beauty that belongs to the solemn and aged growth of undisturbed places". What is more, Hughes identified it as one of his best works in a letter to the French art critic Ernest Chesneau. The fact that the artist returned to the subject several times confirms his fondness for the composition.

Pietro Antonio Rotari (Italian 1707-1762)

We also have another collection, from the property of a deceased's estate (Lots 164-178). These works will be sold to benefit the Art Fund. A highlight from the collection is Lot 164, a portrait of a young boy by Italian artist Pietro Antonio Rotari (1707-1762).

In 1734 after studying in Rome and Naples, Pietro Rotari returned to his hometown of Verona where he opened a private academy concentrating on the production of historical and religious paintings. By 1740 his success brought him the title Count of the Venetian Republic and the following year he travelled to Vienna, where he was introduced to Jean-Etiènne Liotard, the celebrated Swiss pastellist, whose work profoundly influenced him. He was in Dresden, in the service of Frederick Augustus III, when he received an invitation from the Empress Elisabeth of Russia, daughter of Peter the Great, to come to St. Petersburg as first painter of the court. He arrived in 1756 and soon amassed a large fortune.

Although he continued to work as a history painter in Saint Petersburg, it was there that Rotari developed the genre still associated with his name: small paintings of idealized heads, delicate and studiously artless in style, depicting the emotions of young boys and girls. After Rotari's sudden death in 1762, Catherine the Great bought 340 of the artist's 'fancy pictures' for the salon of Peterhof. The pictures Catherine did not buy were returned to Rotari's family in Verona, where they remained in the possession of his descendants until the late nineteenth century.

Frank Cadogan Cowper (British 1877-1958)

Another work from the collection sold to benefit the Art Fund is Lot 169, a pastel version of Frank Cadogan Cowper's Vanity. Cowper first painted 'Vanity' in 1907, the year he became an Associate of The Royal Academy. He was so enamoured with it that he bought it back when it came up for auction at Christie's in 1921. Four years later he produced this pastel replica, which was a practice that he often did for his most popular paintings. He gave the 1907 version to The Royal Academy as his Diploma Work when he became a Royal Academician in 1934. ⁠

The influence of Renaissance painting is clearly seen in Cowper's work. He is often seen as the last exponent of the Pre-Raphaelite tradition and this work pays homage to Rossetti's half-length likenesses of beautiful models with exotic accessories, an idiom itself owing much to sixteenth-century Venetian painting. 'Vanity' suggests the romance of the past and alludes to notions of the chivalric and courtly love.⁠

Cowper collected antique frames and this pastel was most probably drawn especially for this frame as the proportions differ from the earlier version.⁠

William Russell Flint (Scottish 1880-1969)

Finally, we wanted to take a look at Lot 183, this lovely oil on canvas by Scottish artist William Russell Flint (1880-1969), titled "Characters in 'Bless the Bride'" (Lot 183). Bless the Bride was a popular musical staring Lizbeth Webb and Georges Guétary that premiered at the Adelphi Theatre in London in 1947 and ran for three years. The production was notable for its highly stylised scenery by Tanya Moiseiwitsch. It tells the story of an English girl who elopes with a debonair French actor, but they are separated when he enlists to serve in the Franco-Prussian War. They are later reunited and the wedding scene at the climax of the musical is accompanied by the song "This Is My Lovely Day", which became one of the BBC's most requested songs of all time and it's popularity was increased by its association with the wedding in 1947 of Princess Elizabeth and Lt. Philip Mountbatten. Russell-Flint exhibited his homage to the play at The Royal Academy the following year.

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Auction Details

Wednesday 9 October, 10.30am BST
Donnington Priory, Newbury, Berkshire RG14 2JE

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