Early Georgian Portraits Catalogue: Lee

Sir William Lee (1688-1754)

Judge; entered the Middle Temple, 1703; Latin secretary to George I and George II, 1718-30; recorder of Buckingham, 1722; MP from 1727; attorney general to Frederick, Prince of Wales, chief justice of King's Bench, privy councillor and knighted in 1737.

471 By C.F. Barker, 1845, after John Vanderbank, 1738
Oil on canvas, 93 ½ x 57 ¾ in. (2375 x 1467 mm); brown eyes, dark grey eyebrows, double chin, long dark-grey wig, parted in centre; white cravat, collar of SS over justice's scarlet robes, his right hand pointing to papers on a table with ornamental legs, a door behind.

Vanderbank's signed original was owned by Mrs Benedict Eyre, by descent through the Lee family. [1] It was bought by M. Harris at the posthumous sale of her property from Hartwell House, Sotheby's, 26 April 1938, lot 49. The type was engraved as painted in 1738.

Condition: very dark; discoloured varnish, slight bituminous craquelure in the darks of the wig; a small loss top right; surface cleaned four times, varnished three times, repaired, restored and relined once between 1877 and 1902.

Collections: presented, 1877, by the Honourable Society of Judges and Serjeants-at-Law; previous history unknown.

Engraved: mezzotint by J. Faber junior, lettered I Vanderbank pinxt. 1738.

Iconography

Apart from the Vanderbank of 1738, a number of other portraits in the Hartwell House sale show the sitter in the robes of chief justice which he became in succession to Hardwicke, 8 June 1737. Lot 35, a head and shoulders sold as a signed and dated Allan Ramsay of 1746, is now in the Inner Temple; a signed three-quarter length by Joseph Highmore of c.1740 (lot 51) is untraced; a portrait sold as unattributed (lot 75) but almost certainly by Richardson, was acquired by Major Swinton Lee and another three-quarter length, seated, with a statue of Justice in a niche behind the figure was at Sotheby's, 18 March 1970, lot 143, from the collection of Hugh Lee. A portrait was painted and engraved by G. Johnson (CS 2).

Note

1. See family tree in sale catalogue.