Early Georgian Portraits Catalogue: Lovat

Simon Fraser, 11th Baron Lovat (1667?-1747)

Jacobite; prompted by dynastic ambitions, forced his kinswoman the Dowager Baroness Lovat into marriage, and was outlawed, 1700; intrigued with exiled Stuarts; reduced Inverness Castle for the Crown and made governor, 1716;his title restored 1730; supported the Pretender from 1737 and in the '45, while also corresponding with Duncan Forbes the lord president; arrested December '45; taken again after Culloden; beheaded for high treason, in his 80th year, on Tower Hill.

216 By an unknown artist, after William Hogarth, 1746
Oil on canvas, 25 ¾ x 16 in. (654 x 419 mm); broad face, left eyebrow higher than right, double chin, short grey wig; brown suit, coat buttoned to waist, the buttons on the wrong side, grey stockings, dark brown shoes; seated and counting on his fingers with his left hand; on the table, left, a pen, inkstand and open book inscribed MEMOIRS;brown background.

Inscribed round the back of the stretcher: Simon Fraser L^d. Lovat / Executed on Tower Hill for / High Treason / 1745. [1]

Claimed as an original Hogarth, the portrait is crudely painted and demonstrably a copy. [2] A drawing in the Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston, possibly from Weardon Hall, a seat of the Farington family, [3] is said to have been acquired by Lovat's escort Major Gardner, whose wife was a Farington ancestor. [4] Although now cut to a silhouette and possibly damaged, it is surely autograph; [5] the style is very close to drawings such as 'The First Stage of Cruelty' and the portrait of John Wilkes. [6] As it has an unusual amount of cross-hatching, the Harris Museum drawing seems to have been finished up for the etching, lettered Drawn from the Life and Etch’d . . . by Will^m Hogarth, Publish’d . . . August 25th 1746. In the etching the buttons are shown on the wrong side of the coat, arid the gesture, said to show him counting the clans that fought for the Pretender, [7] is similarly reversed, the sitter counting with his left hand. NPG216 also shows the buttons on the wrong side and the gesture as left-handed; it is thus presumably derived from the etching.

It seems unlikely that Hogarth had much opportunity for painting Lovat from life. According to Nichols, a drawing or drawings were taken at the White Hart Inn, St Albans, on 14 August 1746 when, at the invitation of Dr Webster, a local physician, Hogarth met Lovat who was on his way to London for his trial. Another version, mentioned by the Rev. W. Harris to Mrs Harris in a letter dated 28 August 1746, claims that Hogarth invited himself to the inn. [8]

The same head appears in a drawing in the British Museum possibly by J. Ireland. [9] A posthumous oil, the gesture left-handed, with the dealer Rodd in 1827, [10] repeats the satirical coat of arms – beheading block, two headmen's axes, triple gallows and a hangman's noose – shown in one of the later etchings after Hogarth. [11] A picture lent by Lord Lovat to the 'Historical Portraits Exhibition', Aberdeen, 1859 (93), described as 'Painted in the Tower previous to his execution', was apparently a version.

Condition: discoloured varnish, small loss near top right; cleaned, lined and restored 1866.

Collections: bought, 1866, from Weaver's of Wardour Street, London.

Engraved: by Hogarth, August 1746. [12]

Exhibited: ‘NPE', 1867 (320).

Literature: S. Ireland, Graphic Illustrations of Hogarth, 1794; W. Hone, Every-Day and Table Book, 1827; E. Baines, History of Lancashire, 1836; Notes and Queries, Fourth Series, II, 1868; Letters of the First Earl of Malmesbury, 1870; Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires, BM,1870-1954; A.P. Oppé, Drawings of William Hogarth, 1948.

Appearance

He 'makes an odd figure, being generally more loaded with cloaths than a Dutchman with his ten pairs of breeches; he is tall, walks very upright, considering his great age, and is tolerably well shaped; he has a large mouth and short nose, with eyes very much contracted and down looking, a very small forehead, almost all covered with a large periwig; this gives him a grim aspect, but upon addressing anyone, he puts on a smiling countenance,; he is near-sighted, and affects to be much more so than he really is'. [13]

Iconography

Early portrait types, apart from that engraved by J. Simon after Le Clare, are not clearly established. There are two states of the engraving (CS 61), the face being younger in the first. The original portrait c.1697(?) [14]may possibly be the head and shoulders, in armour, inscribed posthumously Simon Lord Fraser of Lovat, decoll 1747, and ascribed to Hogarth; it was lent by Sir Keith Fraser, Bart to the 'Coronation Exhibition', Leicester, 1937 (69). A portrait in the manner of W. Aikman at Castle Grant, Earl of Seafield, has a contemporary or early inscription giving the sitter's name. Another, with rather similar features, entered the collection of Lady Lovat, 1930. A portrait of Lovat in middle age was lent by Archibald Fraser of Abertarff to the 'Historical Portraits Exhibition', 1859 (96). [15]

Notes

1. Date of execution, 9 April 1747.
2. Oppé, Drawings of Hogarth (37).
3. Baines, III, pp.446-47.
4. Notes and Queries, 4th series, 1868, II, p.191.
5. Seen, 1973, by E. Croft-Murray who confirms authorship.
6. Oppé, Drawings of Hogarth, pls 68, 89.
7. Nichols and Steevens, I, p.131.
8. Nichols, 1781, p 107; Ireland, pp.146-47; Letters . . . Malmesbury, I, p.45.
9. Oppé (37), pp.38-39.
10. Hone, I, p.238, with woodcut.
11. Catalogue of . . . Satires, III, part I (2810).
12. Reproduced Paulson, 1965 (166).
13. Gentleman's Magazine, XVI, 1746, p.339.
14. Gallery copy of the exhibition catalogue annotated c.1710, on the date of the wig. 15. No description given.
15. No description given.