Early Georgian Portraits Catalogue: Nash
Richard Nash (1674-1762)
‘Beau Nash'; educated at Carmarthen grammar school and Jesus College, Oxford; after trying the army, entered the Inner Temple, 1693; derived an income from gambling and accepting extravagant wagers; moved, 1705, to Bath; established the Assembly Rooms [1] where he became the arbiter of taste and fashion; by inventing new games evaded the gambling laws of 1740 but, after 1745, his popularity gradually declined; from c.1758 he received a monthly pension of £10 from the corporation; buried in Bath Abbey.
1537 After a portrait by William Hoare of c.1761
Oil on canvas, 30 x 24 ¾ in. (760 x 630 mm); blue eyes, deep pouches below, thick dark grey eyebrows, small mouth, lips parted, double chin, ruddy complexion, brown wig; white shirt and cravat, brown coat, open, over embroidered salmon-pink waistcoat, light fawn tricorne hat; plain brown background; lit from the left.
Believed by the donor to be the prototype portrait by Hoare, NPG 1537 is in fact a coarse copy of the half length presented to the city of Bath in 1761. The portrait, a head and shoulders in the Pump Room between busts of Newton and Pope, [2] occasioned the following epigram attributed to Chesterfield:
This picture plac'd the busts between,
Gives satyr all his strength;
Wisdom and wit are little seen,
But folly at full length. [3]
Condition: paint tending to lift; a number of small losses stopped, mainly in the costume and background.
History: presented, 1909, by Alfred Jones, a Bath dealer.
Engraved: the type engraved by A. Walker as frontispiece to Oliver Goldsmith's Life of Richard Nash, 1762.
Appearance
'Nature', wrote Oliver Goldsmith, 'had by no means favoured Mr. Nash for a beau garcon; his person was clumsy, too large and awkward, and his features harsh, strong and peculiarly irregular; yet, even with these disadvantages he . . . became a universal admirer, and was universally admired.' [4]
Literature: Oliver Goldsmith, Life of Richard Nash, 1762; Holburne of Menstrie Museum, Catalogue. Part 1 A. Miniatures, 2nd edition, Bath, 1936.
Iconography
The earliest accepted portrait is the drawing by Worlidge, in the Royal collection, inscribed Thos. Worlidge Fecit 1736 and equated by Oppé with a purchase made by George IV in 1822. [5] Although the sitter exhibits the tendency towards corpulence which became such a marked feature in later life, the drawing is weak and the face somewhat young for a man of sixty-two. A portrait by Hudson is now known only from Faber junior's mezzotint lettered Hudson pinx.t 1740; a rather stiff oil by an unknown artist using the same face mask was bequeathed by William North to Tunbridge Wells in 1900. An engraving by G. Bockman after J. Worsdale (CS 14) must date after c.1741,when the artist came over from Ireland. The more important portraits were painted after this date and unless otherwise stated are in Bath.
An informative pastel by Benjamin Morris was bequeathed to the Mineral Water Hospital by his brother Daniel (d.1784). Morris, a local artist and a relative of the hospital's first apothecary, did not sign or date the portrait which is traditionally associated with the founding of the hospital in 1742. Two small pencil drawings on vellum by Worlidge are in the Victoria Art Gallery; one is signed and dated 1743. An oil inscribed Mr. Nash age de 71 ans A:Carpentiers p.1745, now in the mayor's parlour, was bequeathed to the city by William Lewis. It is probably the portrait sketched by Scharf in Bath, then in the possession of F. Dowding and ascribed to 'Bates, pupil of Gainsborough'. [6] A version is in the Lansdowne collection, Bowood. Carpentiers (fl.1739, d.1778) is believed to be the son of the sculptor Andries Carpentière who had a workshop in Piccadilly and died 1737. [7] Vertue called Carpentiers an 'idle fellow' [8] but paintings now known to be by him [9] would seem to belie this reputation. A half length, in the Guildhall, of about this period and attributed to Hoare is apparently by a lesser hand. An excellent miniature by Nathaniel Hone purchased, 1930, by the Holburne of Menstrie Museum [10] is signed with the artist's initials and dated 1750. As in several other portraits, it shows the sitter wearing a diamond buckle on his neck-band. In the whole length statue by Joseph Plura (d.1756) [11] erected by public subscription in the Pump Room, 1752, Nash is depicted resting his hand on a plan of the hospital. A plaster bust or conceivably a terracotta painted cream, date and source unknown, is in the Guildhall. [12]
Notes
1. See also Ralph Allen; 1st Earl Chatham; George Wade.
2. See 'The Bath Pump Room', by Lawrence Weaver, p.2, published Country Life, 20 November 1915.
3. Cited DNB, XIV, p.100; ‘full length' seems to be poetic licence.
4. DNB, XIV, p.101.
5. Oppé, p.105 (693).
6. SSB, LXX, pp.20, 28.
7. Gunnis, p.82; see above, Chandos, Iconography.
8. Vertue, III, p.83.
9. NPG archives.
10. Catalogue . . . Miniatures, p.23 and pl.7(b).
11. Tradition holds that Prince Hoare was commissioned, but letters suggest the statue was executed by Plura, seeGunnis, pp.203,,309.
12. Farwell, p.52.