Early Georgian Portraits Catalogue: Appendix
Appendix
A note on the portraits of the Exiled Stuarts [1]
The subject of their portraits is confused and complicated. There is a good deal of documentation in the Stuart Papers at Windsor, but the whole question is bedevilled by their practice of commissioning copies, in a good many cases for propaganda purposes, so that the image distributed could be depressingly far from the original. Not that their agent did not try, within a very limited budget, to control the quality of the copies. In 1727 Hay (Lord Inverness) writes to James's secretary, Sir William Ellis about 'one Gill' who was employed to make copies of a portrait of the Old Pretender by Mytens the Swede, ‘Let the Painter copy the pictures he is doing exactly from the original, for if he pretends to change anything, he will probably spoil them' . . . ‘Let them be well finished and rather pay him something extraordinary that they may be done with care'. [2] But eventually Gill's copies (and ten were in hand) were found to be so bad that he was told to discontinue making them. Jerome Belloni, nephew of Angelo Belloni, was instructed to make up to 13 copies of portraits of James and Clementina. [3]
It is thus often difficult to argue back from derivatives to prototypes and to match surviving pictures with surviving documents. A decline in quality sets in with the later portraits, and where the first generation was able to use Largillière, Belle, David – fashionable court painters – it seems that after the '45 there is little corresponding use of the leading Roman, Batoni, who seems to have been captured by the wealthy English tourists instead. [4] It is clear however that up to c.1740, Trevisani, A.S. Belle, David, Blanchet, Rosalba, Liotard and Duprà were all employed.
Publication of a thorough study is long overdue. There is a useful discussion of later Stuart patronage in M. Levey, The Later Italian Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, 1964, pp.24-25, and a great deal of the relevant material in the Stuart Papers at Windsor has been made accessible through the invaluable extracts made by Miss Stuart-Wortley, whose typescript in the NPG library has been freely used. With the help of these extracts more precision could perhaps ultimately be attained. [5]
In view of the numerous copies and derivatives of portraits of the exiled Stuarts, it seems worth indicating certain groups in Great Britain for which there is a firm provenance going back to Stuart circles. At Stonyhurst College there are the following portraits (nos 35-39 in the catalogue of 1932): two of the Old Pretender attributed to Gennari, a later portrait attributed to Mengs, Maria Clementina Sobieska by an unknown artist, and the Young Pretender, aetat 8-10, attributed to Nattier, but probably by David. These were bought by Father Thomas Glover in Rome from the Alberoni collection, 1834-35 and 1837.
The Blanchets of Charles and Henry, both 1738, were bought by the Earl of Orford at the sale of the Duchess of Parma (?1767), and have descended to the present owner Mrs Colin Davy [Editor's note, 2014: now in the National Portrait Gallery]. These are the pair mentioned in the Stuart Papers as having been painted for the princes' great-aunt the Duchess of Parma [6] (last exhibited RA, 'Italian Art and Britain', London, 1960 (144) and (138)). In the same collection are portraits of James, c.1720, attributed to Rigaud, but probably after, if not by David, and of Maria Clementina, given to Largillière though most likely not by him.
Another group of Blanchet portraits, from Duns Castle, sold Christie's, 25 March 1966, lots 80-83, were acquired in Rome in the 18th century by the Jacobite William Hay of Edington, thence passed to his brother Alexander Hay from whom they descended in the Hay family: the Old Pretender, Maria Clementina Sobieska (cp NPG 1262), Cardinal York, and the Young Pretender, dated 1739. The portraits of the two boys are now at Holyrood House.
A group belonging formerly to W. Pollard-Urquhart were exhibited in 'Historical Portraits', Aberdeen, 1859: the Old Pretender (55), the Young Pretender (58), Maria Clementina Sobieska (56), and Cardinal York (59). These descended in the Urquhart family, Chevalier Urquhart having been a gentleman-in-waiting of Charles in Florence, 1770 and after. The portraits of Charles, Henry, and Maria Clementina are now in the Scottish NPG (886-88).
Certain portraits at Blairs College, Kincardineshire, came from the Scots College, Paris and were exhibited 'Historical Portraits', Aberdeen, 1859: the Young Pretender (103), Cardinal York (60), and the Old Pretender (111). [7]
A group at Stanford Hall were bought by Lady Braye from the sale of Cardinal York's effects in Rome in 1807: two of the Old Pretender, one of Maria Clementina Sobieska, and the Young Pretender by L. Pécheux, 1770. Lady Braye also purchased at the Malatesta sale in 1842 (cp York, Cardinal, NPG 378).
Three pastels from this sale went to Townley Hall, near Drogheda: the Young Pretender by La Tour, 1748 (cp NPG 2161), another attributed to Batoni, 1780 (type of NPG 376), and Cardinal York, possibly by H.D. Hamilton (cp NPG 378).
Notes
1. See also the following individual sitters: Albany, Countess of; Charles, Prince; James, 'The Old Pretender'; Louisa, Princess; Maria Clementina Sobieska, Princess; York, Cardinal.
2. S-W, I, pp.19, 22.
3. RA Stuart Papers, vol.105, letter III; S-W, I, p.23.
4. For his use as a copyist of a miniature, see above York, Cardinal, NPG 129.
5. A useful short account, well illustrated, is to be found in the SMT Magazine and Scottish Country Life, April 1946, and the reader is referred to Miss Farquhar's articles in the British Numismatists’ Journal.
6. RA Stuart Papers, account book, M38; S-W, II, pp.24, 26.
7. For the interest of the Principal of the College in the cause of the Stuarts, see S-W, pp.9-11. Miss Stuart-Wortley records that in 1922 and 1937, the college still contained portraits of Charles and Henry.