Early Georgian Portraits Catalogue: Pope
Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Poet; son of a Roman Catholic linen draper; deformed by illness at the age of twelve and his health permanently impaired; Pastorals, his first published work, appeared in J. Tonson's Poetic Miscellanies,1709, Essay on Criticism,published anonymously, 1711, attracted the attention of Addison; Rape of the Lock published in Lintot's Miscellanies, 1712, and separately, 1714; left Addison's 'little senate' to join the 'Scriblerus Club' of Swift, Gay and Oxford; the Iliad translated 1715-20 and the Odyssey, 1725-26; his close friends included Lady Mary Wortley Montagu with whom, as with many others, he quarrelled, and Martha Blount; among later works were the Dunciad,1728-43, Moral Essays,1731-35, the Essay on Man,1733-34, the Horatian Satires and the Epistles, 1733-38; moved, 1719, to Twickenham; buried in Twickenham Church.
112 Attributed to Charles Jervas
Oil on canvas, 77x 50 in. (1956 x 1270 mm); dark blue-grey eyes, grey eyebrows, long grey wig, centre-parted, wisp of black hair at forehead showing beneath; grey suit, coat and long waistcoat unbuttoned, matching grey breeches and stockings, white neck-tie with tasselled ends, white wrist ruffles; crimson high-backed chair; a young woman in brown dress, on tiptoe, right; a classical stone head (Homer?) on an ornate pedestal, left.
The portrait, on twill canvas, is somewhat coarsely painted and is not perhaps the first version. The perspective of the chair is out of drawing, the cut of the suit in the lap, difficult to follow and the legs, though characteristic, seem disproportionately small. It is arguable that the picture was intended to be seen from below and the distortion therefore deliberate. The female figure, according to Scharf, is probably Martha Blount or possibly Pope's sister-in-law Mrs Rackett. [1] However, a comparison with portraits of the former is not conclusive and no portrait of the latter is recorded. The figure may well be allegorical. Wimsatt draws attention [2] to the resemblance between the bust and Jervas's drawing of the head of Homer in the Villa Farnese, engraved by Vertue as frontispiece to the first edition of Pope's translation of the Iliad,1715. It is reminiscent of the bust of Homer by Bernini, probably a renaissance copy, now at Scone, bequeathed by Pope to William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield [3] (seealso Richard Mead, NPG 15).
The authorship rests mainly on style. Attribution to Jervas was first published, 1819, when an engraving by Robinson (O'D 6), showing the sitter in the same pose, appeared in Targini’s translation of Essay on Man.A similar whole length in the Proby collection, Elton Hall, is believed to be the portrait which Pope presented, c.1727, with a set of his Odyssey, [4]to his friend William Cleland (1674?-1741), one-time commissioner of customs in Scotland, and of taxes in England. Cleland was related through his wife's family to John Proby, 1st Baron Carysfort. Neither NPG 112 nor the Proby oil is signed or dated. A head and shoulders engraved, 1781, by James Caldwall and inscribed Jarvis Pinxt. is possibly a free adaptation of the NPG type. A portrait with face mask reversed, similar to the Robinson engraving and evidently completed by the autumn of 1714 when Pope's correspondence first refers to Vertue working on an engraving of it, was presented, 1722, to the Bodleian by Edward Harley, Earl of Oxford, who had probably purchased it from the estate of Matthew Prior. [5] Published, 1715, without date or painter's name, it appears in Vertue's list of that year.
Pope maintained a long and close relationship with Jervas with whom he took painting lessons in the early summer of 1713 and whose London home he used as an address until as late as 1726. [6] Both on apparent age and costume, and from Robinson's advertisement of his engraving 'executed at an early period of his life, by his friend Jervas', [7] NPG 112 must date from near the beginning of the friendship.
An anonymous black chalk drawing inscribed with Pope's name in an old hand, now in the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, seems likely to be correctly named; it may possibly prove to be by Jervas or by Richardson, [8] and may be related to NPG 112.
Condition:surface cleaned four times, varnished three times between 1879 and 1898; cleaned 1961.
Collections:bought, 1860, together with Christopher Wren by Kneller (NPG 113), from J. Mathews of Edgbaston House, Birmingham; owned, 1819, by George Watson Taylor, MP, and bought at the sale of his property, 24 July 1832, lot 92, by a Mr Swabey; subsequently in the collection of Edward Copleston, Bishop of Llandaff (d.1849), and sold, 1850, by Toplis & Harding of St Paul's Churchyard to W. White, printseller of Brownlow Street, Holborn, by whom sold to J. Mathews; earlier history not known.
Engraved:the type engraved by J.H. Robinson, 1819.
4132 Studio of Michael Dahl, c.1727
Oil on canvas, 30 x 25 in. (762 x 635 mm); grey-green eyes, short grey wig, fresh complexion; bright blue gown trimmed with dark brown fur, white shirt open at collar; white quill in his right hand; grey-green background.
‘My portrait, by Dahl, I have sent a week ago to your nephew’ wrote Pope to his publisher Jacob Tonson, 7 June 1732. It is not known, however, whether he refers to a canvas or to an impression of John Simon's mezzotint engraving inscribed M.Dahl Pinx. 1727 / J.Simon fec.1728. [9]Three oils are known, none clearly pre-eminent: NPG 4132; a somewhat better version of the type at Reading University, Faculty of Letters, and a copy at Wilton House, collection Earl of Pembroke. [10]
Condition:some comparatively recent retouchings between the eyebrows.
Collections:bought, 1959, from William Dawson of Pall Mall; in the possession, 1939, of B.F. Stevens and Browne of Little Russell Street from whom acquired, in or after 1942, by Peter Murray Hill; previous history not known.
Engraved:by J. Simon, 1728.
Exhibited: Local Treasures', Ealing Museum Society, 1969.
1179 Attributed to Jonathan Richardson, c.1737
Oil on canvas, 24 1/8 x 18 in. (613 x 458 mm); profile; grey eye, light brown eyebrow, wisps of dark hair just visible beneath dark green bay wreath, pale complexion; grey-blue gown over white shirt; brown background.
Although undated and apparently unique, NPG 1179 is very near a profile drawing with bay wreath of 1737 at Windsor Castle. [11] The handling of the oil is free and sensitive and possibly one of Richardson's most successful portraits. The first extant dated drawing of the laureate poet is a three-quarter face dated 31 January 1733/34 in the British Museum [12] in which the sitter appears slightly older than in NPG 1179.
Condition:a number of small retouchings, including a large one on the eyebrow.
Collections:presented, 1898, by Alfred A. de Pass of Cliffe House, Falmouth; previous history unknown.
561 Attributed to Jonathan Richardson, c.1738
Oil on canvas, 17 3/8 x 14 3/8 in. (440 x 370 mm); profile; brown eye, dark brown eyebrow, brown hair greying at temples, sallow complexion; brown gown with brown fur collar; brown background.
NPG 561 is a poor version of a number of oils of the type, the best being at Petworth from the collection of, and probably commissioned by, Richard Mead, [13] presumably the portrait mentioned by Pope in his letter to Richardson of 4 January 1737/38: ‘. . . I will come to you to morrow by eleven, to sit till one if you please for ye Dr's Picture'. [14] NPG 561 is close to a drawing dated 1734 in the possession of Roger Warner as well as to another in the Royal collection, Windsor Castle [15] and three etchings showing the sitter in fur collar, the last dated1738 and lettered OYTOΣ EKEIONOΣ. [16]
For fuller details of Richardson's profile portraits, seeIconography, below, and Wimsatt. [17]
Condition:surface cleaned and varnished 1879; lined 1887.
Collections:transferred, 1879, from the British Museum to whom presented by Francis Annesley, 1794.
Engraved:the Petworth portrait was engraved by T. Holloway, 1797, for Joseph Warton's edition of the Works of Pope,vol. 1.
299 By William Hoare
Pastels on grey paper mounted on canvas, 23 7/8 x 17 ¾ in. (607 x 452 mm); deep blue eyes, grey eyebrows, strong chin, light blue velvet cap over shaven head; matching blue gown over slate-coloured coat, white shirt; plain brown background, lighter on the left.
Inscribed on the back of the paper, right: This Picture belongs to Mr Andrews / of Hillhouse. / Wm. Hoare / Bath. / 1784.
Too little is known to pronounce upon Hoare's studio practice, but what might be termed his personal style is probably reflected in the lively and almost Watteauesque portrait of Zincke in the British Museum. Hoare made his reputation, however, as a painter of portraits in crayon, and eventually had also a considerable output of oils. His portraits in oil probably began life, as in the case of Chatham (q.v.), with an ad vivum chalk drawing, the costume and accessories being put in without further sittings. It is not improbable that the highly finished pastel paintings were also worked up as required from such sketches as and when commissions came in. NPG 299 is similar in technique to the artist's drawing of Newcastle (q.v.), and the paper is turned over the stretcher in the same manner. The portrait is not dated but both sitter and artist were in Bath in 1739, the latter newly returned after nine years in Italy. This conjunction provides a terminus for the type. A pastel now in the collection of Professor Maynard Mack, Yale University, is datable to c.1743 from the inscription on the back: ‘For Mrs. Blount to be left at Lady Gerards in Welbeck Street by Oxford Chappel.' [18] The inscription on NPG 299 giving the date 1784 is probably in Hoare's own hand. While it may conceivably represent the date of completion, NPG 299 may have been drawn much earlier, remained in the studio, and made over to Andrews in 1784.
Wimsatt discusses a number of later repetitions in oil. [19] One such example may be the portrait at Yale from the collection of the late Mr James Osborn, New Haven, Connecticut, [20] formerly in the Hurd Library, Hartlebury Castle, where listed 1813, 'Mr Pope—painted by Mr Hoare of Bath from an original in Crayons by himself'. An oil first noted in J. Seeley's Stowe, A Description of the House and Gardens,published 1797, was probably that painted for Pope's friend Nugent whose daughter married the Marquess of Buckingham, master of Stowe. It was last heard of in the Peel Heirlooms sale, from Drayton Manor, Robinson, Fisher and Harding, 6 and 7 December 1917, lot 90. [21] Engraved by Picart in 1807, it had been variously attributed to Hudson and Richardson. A poor quality oil of the Hoare type with the name Peel just visible on the back was seen at the NPG in 1971.
Condition:a little rubbed and faded; some small losses; a water stain (?), bottom right.
Collections: bequeathed, 1870, by the Rev. Charles Townsend of Preston, near Brighton; possibly owned by John Andrews (d.1786) of Hillhouse, Gloucestershire, or painted for him but never collected [22] thus remaining in the artist's studio; given or bequeathed by his son Prince Hoare [23] to the Rev. Townsend.
Engraved:the type engraved by C. Picart after the drawing by Gardner, published in Bowles’ edition of the Works of Pope, 1806; also by Alais lettered Alexander Pope . . . from a Picture in the Possession / of the Marquis of Buckingham. / London. Published Sept 1st 1821, by Thos. McLean, 26 Haymarket, and again by Alais From a Picture by Richardson, / in the Duke of Buckingham's Collection at Stowe. / London: . . . 1824.
873 By William Hoare
Drawing, red chalk on paper, 6 5/8 x 4 ½ in. (170 x 120 mm), sight measurements; profile, full length; short wig, frock coat to below knees, wide cuffs; pointing index finger of right hand.
Framed in a paper mount. At the bottom, between the first and second rules: A: Pope Esqr.:and between the second and outer rules: ad vivum and Wm Hoare in the corners. At the top a pencil inscription reads Mr Pope and on the back in ink, possibly in the hand of Prince Hoare: This is the only Portrait that was ever drawn / of Mr Pope at Full-length. It was done / without his knowledge, as he was deeply engaged / in conversation with Mr Allen in the Gallery at / Prior Park; by Mr Hoare, who sat at the other / end of the Gallery.—Pope would never have / forgiven the Painter had he known it. He was / too sensible of the deformity of his Person to allow / the Whole of it to be represented. This Drawing / is therefore exceedingly valuable, as it is an / Unique of this celebrated Poet; also, in pencil, 64 and 176.
The drawing, on hand-made 18th-century paper, may well be the prototype of several known versions and copies. [24] When first published, apparently in 1797 in Warton's edition of Pope's Works, the above legend appeared on the opposite page. Hoare, who practised painting in Bath for about fifty years, is unlikely to have drawn the sitter before his return from Italy in 1739. Pope was last at Prior Park in the summer of 1743.
Condition: the paper, possibly once white, is now brownish-pink with further discolourations in the background, lower right, and across the right foot.
Collections:bought, June 1891, from Colnaghi's, the purchaser at Christie's, 24 April 1891, lot 176, sale of a collection of engravings and drawings ‘Formed by the Second Viscount Palmerston’; possibly bought by his second wife, Lady Palmerston, who visited Bath in 1791 and 1792, the year of Hoare's death. The catalogue of the artist's sale by Mr Plura of Bath, 18 February 1794, has yet to be located.
Engraved: by P. Condé in Warton's edition of the Works of Pope, 1797 (I, facing p.ix) and in W.C. Bowles’ edition of 1806.
2483 After a bust by Louis François Roubiliac of c.1738
Plaster bust painted terracotta colour, 25 5/8 in. (651 mm) high, including base; short wavy hair, deep lines from nose to mouth; neck and chest bare, shoulders framed by folds of gown or drapery. Base, of one piece with the bust, incised POPE.
Although evidently inspired by Roubiliac, NPG 2483 is neither a close nor faithful copy of any of his busts. [25] Onstylistic grounds it is likely to be a late, possibly 19th century, work. Vertue, 1741, records: 'Mr. Rubbilac Sculptor of Marble—besides several works in Marble—moddels in Clay. had Modelld from the Life several Busts or portraits extreamly like Mr. Pope. more like than any other Sculptor has done I think . . .'. [26] In 1742, describing Pope at Lord Oxford's sale, the young Joshua Reynolds noted: 'Roubiliac the statuary, who made a bust of him from life observed that his countenance was that of a person who had been much afflicted with headache, and that he should have known the fact from the contracted appearance of his skin above the eyebrows, though he had not been apprised of it.’ [27]
Roubiliac had completed a bust by 1738. Four marble versions are dated as follows: 1738, now at Temple Newsam House, Leeds, probably sold from Kenwood, 1922; 1740, at Milton, the Earl of Fitzwilliam, and the only one of the four not incised ad vivum;1741, Shipley Art Gallery, Gateshead, at one time in the Lambton collection, from the posthumous sale of Mrs Garrick and presumably owned by Garrick himself; again 1741, Dalmeny, collection Lord Rosebery, the bust reported, 1791, in the possession of James Bindley (1737-1818), a collector of note at the Stamp Office, later owned by George Watson Taylor, previous owner of NPG 112, and by Sir Robert Peel. A full head-and-shoulders terracotta corresponding with the Rosebery bust and presumably preceding the marbles, was lot c76 on the third day of the Roubiliac sale, 14 May 1762 and probably then passed to the surgeon and collector John Belchier (1706-85). Later owners were Samuel Rogers, John Murray III and Mrs Copner from whom it was acquired, Sotheby's, 19 June 1970, lot 47, by the Barber Institute of Fine Arts. A plaster of the same type in the British Museum was among those bought by Dr Maty at the sculptor's sale. A number of other versions include a small bronze in the collection of F.J.B. Watson, and the marble in the Victoria and Albert Museum. [28]
Condition:tip of nose broken and replaced; a few paint losses.
Collections:bought, 1930, from the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels; stated to have been in a garden at Antwerp, and brought from England many years before.
Literature: J. Spence, Anecdotes, 1820; J. Prior, Life of Edmond Malone, 1860; G. Sherburn, The Early Career of Alexander Pope, 1934; Prose Works of Alexander Pope, ed. N. Ault, 1936; Portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds, ed. F.W. Hilles, New York, 1952; The Correspondence of Alexander Pope, ed. G. Sherburn, 1956; W.K. Wimsatt, The Portraits of Alexander Pope, 1965; M. Whinney, Victoria and Albert Museum, English Sculpture 1720-1830, 1971.
Appearance
‘A lively little Creature', according to a description, almost certainly the sitter's own, 'with long Arms and Legs: A spider is no ill Emblem of him'; and in Sir Joshua Reynolds' account of 1742: 'about four feet six high; very humpbacked and deformed; he wore a black coat; and according to the fashion of that time, had on a little sword; . . . he had a large and very fine eye, and a long handsome nose; his mouth had those peculiar marks which always are found in the mouths of crooked persons; and the muscles which ran across the cheek were so strongly marked as to appear like small cords . . . an extraordinary face, not an everyday countenance,—a pallidly studious look; not merely a sharp, keen countenance, but something grand, like Cicero's.' [29]
Iconography
Although sensitive about his image, Pope's appearance is well charted at most stages of his life. He probably sat to a dozen artists and, apart from drawings and miniatures, some nineteen major types and numerous versions are known. An unusually large number survive, from the earliest at the age of seven to the late accounts of c.1742 by Richardson and Vanloo. Portraits, often commissioned by admirers, are now widely dispersed and few collections possess more than one example. The Gallery holdings lack significant sculpture but include the important whole length by Jervas (NPG 112, above) painted early in the sitter's career, the fine late portrait by Richardson (NPG 1179, above) and the telling small drawing by Hoare (NPG 873, above). An exhibition of the major portraits was held in the Gallery in 1961. The comprehensive study by W.K. Wimsatt, 1965, incorporated new information and versions not here detailed. A supplement is being undertaken by J.C. Riley, 1977.
The first portrait inscribed A.Pope. Anno Aetatis / 7 and the only one known before his health was impaired, is probably the picture described 'drawn ... when about ten years old: in which his face is round, plump, pretty and of a fresh complexion'. William Mannick, the family priest, further noted that he had often heard the sitter's mother say that 'he was then exactly like that picture: as I have often been myself told that it was the perpetual application that he fell into, about two years afterwards, that chang'd his form; and ruin'd his constitution.—the Laurel-branch, in that picture was not inserted originally; but was added, long after, by Jervas'. [30] The portrait, first seen in an anonymous sale, Christie's, 21 October 1960, lot 19, is now at Yale from the collection of the late Mr James M. Osborn.
During the years of rising fame the main portrait types are the two by Jervas, 1714-27, discussed under NPG 112, and three by Kneller, [31] the earliest of which, 1716, showing Pope with the Iliad,was engraved by Smith (CS 203) and lettered in the second state G. Kneller ... Pinx 1716 / J. Smith fec. et ex.1717. An oil corresponding with the engraving at Raby Castle, collection Lord Barnard, is signed and dated 1719; [32] it shows the opening lines at the beginning of the third volume of Pope's edition of the Iliad, IX, published 1717. The portrait is likely to have been painted for Lord Oxford's famous library at Wimpole and may be a repetition, the prototype perhaps being one of the undated versions in the collection of Lord Bathurst, Lord Crawford or another known to have been in the possession, 1858, of the Rev. Mr Gunnery. [33] Pope and Kneller were neighbours on card-playing terms by 1717 [34] but no specific references to portraiture around this date are known. The second type, a profile with laurel wreath framed by an uroboros, the ancient symbol of eternity (serpent biting its own tail), at the Hirsel, by descent in the collection of the Earls of Home and there since at least c.1804 when listed by Harding, [35] is signed GK in monogram and dated 1721. The concept is reminiscent of Kneller's profile of George I 'for the coinage' (q.v.), and, as Wimsatt plausibly suggests, it may relate to Pope's reworking c.1719-21 of the lines To Mr. Addison, Occasioned by his Dialogues on Medals. [36]A studio drawing, possibly a pattern, is in the British Museum. [37]
From the letter to his publisher Tonson, written probably in May 1722, it appears that a sitting for the third type was delayed by Pope's work on his edition of Shakespeare. In August 1723, however, two months before Kneller's death, Pope informed Lord Harcourt '. . . I shall not be any way disappointed of the Honour you intend me, of filling a place in your Library with my Picture. I came to Town yesterday, & got admission to Sir Godfrey Kneller, who assur'd me the Original was done . . .’. [38] The portrait, dated 1722 and still in the Harcourt collection, at Stanton Harcourt, is inscribed rather than signed and shows the sitter with his arm resting on a volume of Homer.
Jonathan Richardson the elder, a worthy if less fashionable painter, had been acquainted with the Pope family from an early date and with the sitter from c.1716. A drawing of Mrs Pope (her brother-in-law was the miniaturist Samuel Cooper), in the collection of W.S. Lewis, Farmington, Connecticut, is inscribed on the back in the artist's hand from a Dr. done by Candle light abt the Year 1703;another, 1717, is of the sitter's father on his deathbed. [39] Four oil types by Richardson and some thirty-five [40] drawings survive representing the sitter between c.1718 and 1741. The earliest canvas of c.1718at Hagley shows him seated, nearly whole length, with his dog Bounce, a Great Dane; A. Pope is inscribed on its collar. Although the type has been given to Vanloo, the attribution published in The English Connoisseur, 1766, is surely correct. Authorship and dating are further confirmed by a drawing of the head on which Richardson wrote, Alex. Pope Esq. / Painted abt the year 171~[8] / 14 Feb: 1735 / 6. A version at Yale University is without the dog.
The remaining Richardson portraits are late. A second type is the straightforward account, three-quarter face, best represented at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. [41] A smaller version owned by Mrs H.W. Poore, Sussex has also been attributed to Jervas. [42] Both are undated. A head at Petworth is perhaps a variant. The Boston portrait first noted, 1807, at Donington Park, seat of the Earl of Moira, was reputedly painted for Burlington. A date is established from the artist's etching of 1736 with the same face mask inscribed Amicitiae causa and a drawing in the collection of R. Warner, inscribed on the back Alex Pope Esqr 6 Sep 1736. [43]Compared with another drawing dated 22 February of the same year, [44] Pope looks a little young for forty-eight. It is possible that although dated 1736, the Warner drawing and the Boston oil might have been taken from an earlier portrait or idealised. The third type, discussed under NPG 1179, is the outstanding profile of c.1737with laurel wreath. Another, more prosaic but apparently related profile in dark red fur-lined coat, of which NPG 561 is a poor example, is of c.1738. The final portrait, similar to the last but three-quarter face and about half life-size, in the Fitzwilliam Museum is signed with monogram and dated 1742. A version from the collection of the Marquess of Dalhousie which has passed to Lady Lindsay, Colstoun, bears an inscription on the back This picture Mr Pope sat[e] to my father for at my request for me 1742. [45]
Also discussed by Wimsatt, often for the first time, are thirty-four extant drawings by Richardson—yet more are lost. Many are small scale in pencil on vellum about six inches high, in the manner of the plumbago draughtsmen. Among the best of these are two of July 1741 showing Pope asleep. [46] There are a few more formal life-size chalk drawings, akin to the artist's self-portrait (seebelow, Richardson). A number of the drawings relate to the oils, some are repetitive, while still others explore the sitter's features in relation to those of Milton and Chaucer.
If Richardson can be said to have succeeded Kneller and Jervas as painter-in-ordinary to Pope, albeit with less assurance, he at least had an extended acquaintance with the sitter. Surviving examples do not suggest that the same privilege was given to Michael Dahl whose portrait, 1727, is discussed under NPG 4132, above.
Another artist whose portrait pleases posterity perhaps more than it did the sitter, is Michael Rysbrack. A fine though somewhat aloof marble given by Sir William Garrow (1760-1840) to his executor E.L. Badeley (d.1868), who presented it to the Athenaeum is incised ALEX: POPE Poeta / M- -R-S- / 1730. [47][Editor's note, 2014: now National Portrait Gallery.] No sittings are recorded but an undated letter, apparently written in the summer of 1725, in which directions to the sculptor's house are given by James Gibbs, Lord Oxford's architect, suggest that Pope may well have visited him. Although Rysbrack would presumably have made a model, no clay, terracotta or plaster of this date is now known. The terracotta acquired by the Fitzwilliam Museum from Spinks in 1932 is posthumous. Completed by January 1761, it is one of a number of pieces discussed in letters from the sculptor to his patron Sir Edward Littleton of Teddesley Hall, Stafford. [48] Some form of the bust must, however, have existed by 29 March 1729 when The Weekly Journal or the British Gazetteer tartly versified: 'REISBRANK, no longer let thy Art be shown / in forming Monsters from the Parian Stone . . .' and in November complaint was made that certain 'Gentlemen of the Dunciad' have gone so far as to 'libel an eminent sculptor for making our author's Busto in marble, at the request of Mr. Gibbs the Architect'. A verse generally accepted as Pope's, sent by him to Lord Oxford, proclaimed: ‘ ‘Tis granted Sir: the Busto's a damn'd head / Pope is a little Elf / All he can say for't, is, He neither made / the Busto, nor himself'. [49] In 1732 Vertue included 'Mr Alex Pope a Marble' in the list of thirty-nine items 'Modelld from the life many Nobleman Ladies & Learned men and others'. In 1734 a Mr Gerard wrote, 'Pope ordered several Pictures and Busts of Himself, in which he would have been represented as a comely Person; but Mr. Rysbrack scorning to prostitute his Art, made a Bust so like him, that Pope returned it without paying for it'. [50]
An oil roundel by William Kent [51] over a door at Chiswick House is signed and dated on the back 1735, as is another of Inigo Jones, similarly framed, in the same room. The quality, as in other paintings by Kent, is rather weak and the interest lies more in its connection with Burlington (q.v.), the builder of Chiswick. The portrait was listed in a bed chamber in 1761 by Dodsley, with a companion roundel of Lady Burlington by Aikman. [52] An undated stone bust in the Temple of Worthies, Stowe, perhaps of the late 'thirties and attributable to Rysbrack, was made for Pope's friend Richard Temple, Lord Cobham.
There follow the type by Roubiliac of 1738-42 discussed above under NPG 2483, the medal by Dassier recorded by Vertue, 1741, as from life, the portraits by Hoare of c.1739 (NPG 299, above) and of c.1742 (NPG 873, above), and finally the important three-quarter length by Vanloo of 1742. The original, in the collection of Lord Mansfield, was painted for William Murray, 1st Lord Mansfield, and given to him, a fellow member of the Scriblerus Club, by the sitter. Murray, as a young man, was also painted by Vanloo (NPG 474). A replica of the portrait of Pope, formerly in the collection of the Earl of Upper Ossory, belongs to W.S. Lewis and an early copy mentioned in a MS list of 1775 is at Knole. [53] Although attributed to Jervas, Faber junior's mezzotint after the portrait (CS 294) confirms Vanloo's authorship of the prototype; it is lettered Alexander Pope: Poeta Anglus, ob. Ao 1744 Aetat: 57. Hanc Imaginem ex ipso Archetypo a Vanlo picto 1742 expressam viro Honorabili Guilelmo Murray Solicitatori Generali apud quem Deponitur Humillime D.D.D. Johannes Faber. . . .
Notes
1. Scharf, pp.359-60.
2. Wimsatt, p.23.
3. Exh. 'The True Resemblance of Lord Mansfield', Kenwood, 1971 (5).
4. Wimsatt, pp.19-20.
5. Wimsatt, pp.15-19; Prior, pp.428-29; exh. 'Irish Portraits 1600-1860', 1969 (16).
6. Wimsatt, pp.11-13, note 44.
7. Ibid, p.24.
8. R.R. Wark, Early British Drawings in the Huntington Collection 1600-1750, The Huntington Library, California, 1969, p.25 and plate.
9. Wimsatt, p.93.
10. Ibid, p.95, plates 10.1, 10.2.
11. Ibid, p.179, pl.35.
12. Ibid, p.170, pl.23a.
13. Ibid, p.206, pl.52.1.
14. Ibid, p.205.
15. Ibid, p.172, pls.24, 25.
16. Ibid, pp.194-95.
17. Ibid, pp. 205-22.
18. Mrs Blount was there in November 1743, see Sherburn, Correspondence, IV, p.485, noted by Wimsatt in a letter, 25 June 1973.
19. Wimsatt, pp.287-97.
20. Ibid, p.290, pl.63.4.
21. Ibid, pp.283-86.
22. Ibid, pp.287-89.
23. Dramatist and artist (1755-1834); not to be confused with the sculptor Prince Hoare, the artist's brother.
24. Wimsatt, pp. 298-300
25. Ibid, pp. 227-50.
26. Vertue, III, p.105.
27. Wimsatt, p. xxv.
28. Whinney, Victoria and Albert . . ., pp. 80-82.
29. Wimsatt, pp. xxiv-xxv.
30. Ibid, p.5.
31. Ibid, pp.27-72.
32. Ibid, pp.35-36, pl. 5.1.
33. Ibid, pp.37, 43-44, pls 5.2, 5.3.
34. Ibid, p.32.
35. II, p.29.
36. Wimsatt, pp.50-59.
37. A good oil copy, in my view by Richardson, was sold from the Earl of Sefton's collection, Croxteth Park, Liverpool, Christie's, 17 September 1973, lot 1020.
38. Wimsatt, p.60.
39. Ibid, pp. 80-81.
40. Including a lead on vellum, now at Yale, similar to Wimsatt (31) from the L.G. Duke sale, Christie's, 29 April 1970, lot 121.
41. Wimsatt, p.203.
42. Ibid, p.201.
43. Ibid, p.177, pl.32.
44. Ibid, pl.34a.
45. Ibid, pp.220-21, pl.55.1. The prototype may nevertheless be the Richardson of 1738 from Anthony Storer's collection, Christie's, 24 November 1972, lot 62, now at Mellon Centre, Yale. See Wimsatt (56) and p.145.
46. Wimsatt, pp.166, pl.19 (13), 19 (14).
47. Ibid, pp. 100-06.
48. Webb, pp.76-78, 203-05, 223; Wimsatt, pp.346-47.
49. Wimsatt, pp.101, 104.
50. Ibid, p.104.
51. Walpole's description in 1760, Walpole Society, XVI, p.23, implies this is by Aikman, but the Anecdotes, p.778 n.1, refer to this roundel as by Kent.
52. R. and J. D. Dodsley, London and Its Environs Described, II, p.116; see also Wimsatt, pp.127-29.
53. Wimsatt, p.320.