Early Georgian Portraits Catalogue: Stebbing

Henry Stebbing (1687-1763)

Divine; entered St Catharine Hall, Cambridge, 1704; BA, 1708, MA, 1712, DD, 1730; fellow, 1710, and incorporated at Oxford, 1738; elected preacher to the Society of Gray's Inn, 1731; chaplain to George II 1732; installed archdeacon of Wiltshire, 1735; chancellor of Sarum, 1739; rector of Redenhall, Norfolk, 1748, until his death; a controversial speaker and writer who attacked Benjamin Hoadly, George Whitefield (q.v.) and Warburton, his own writings included A Rational Enquiry into the proper Methods of Supporting Christianity . . .,1720, An Essay concerning Civil Government . . .,1724, and An Apology for the Clergy of the Church of England . . .,1734; an early collection, The Works of Henry Stebbing, published 1737.

572 By Joseph Highmore, 1757
Oil on canvas, 50 x 39 in. (1270 x 991 mm); blue eyes, pale grey eyebrows, broad lined face, ruddy complexion, white wig; black gown with white bands; red chair, a small book with gilt tooling in his right hand and two others on a table with red cloth, left; background of light brown drapery and grey-brown masonry; lit from top right.

Signed bottom right: Jos: Highmore / pinx: / 1757.

A good and lively example of Highmore's work. No other version is known.

Condition:a scratch or crack restored below the book in the sitter's hand; surface cleaned and varnished 1879, 1887, 1895 and 1902.

Collections:transferred, 1879, from the British Museum to whom presented, 1813, by the sitter's grandson Henry Stebbing, the poet and historian.

Exhibited:'Paintings by Joseph Highmore', Kenwood, 1963 (41).

Iconography

An engraved portrait by J. Roberts, published posthumously 1766 as the frontispiece to Stebbing's Tracts, is after J. Weller, possibly the obscure artist of this name (b.1698) known by two chalk drawings in the British Museum. [1] Another engraving by W.N. Gardiner after Nathaniel Dance was issued as the frontispiece to Verses to his Memory, 1791. [2] The originals are not otherwise known.

Notes

1. Binyon, IV, p.316.
2. Strickland, I, p.398.