Early Georgian Portraits Catalogue: Wood
Robert Wood (1716-71) [1]
Classical archaeologist and politician; educated Glasgow University, 1732; travelled in Italy and the near East and in 1750 led an expedition to Syria with John Bouverie and James Dawkins; published Ruins of Palmyra, 1753, and Ruins of Balbec, 1757; guide to Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater on grand tour; returned to England, 1755; MP for Brackley, 1761-69, 1771; as an under-secretary of state, 1756-63, was prosecuted for illegal entry in seizing the papers of Wilkes on his arrest under a general warrant; Wood married Ann Spottowe or Skettowe; his only surviving son, also Robert, born c 1762,died after 1803. [2]
4868 By Allan Ramsay, 1755
Oil on canvas, 38 ¾ x 29 ¼ in. (985 x 743 mm); blue eyes, brown eyebrows, fresh complexion, short white wig with queue; white lace cravat and cuffs, russet velvet coat and waistcoat with gold embroidery; his right hand holding a sheet of paper with writing indicated; a map of Greece on table lettered –ILLESPONTO / EVROPA, also a standish, quill and sealing wax; pilaster, background left; lit from the left.
Signed and dated along the bottom edge of the table: A. Ramsay. 1755.
Robert Adam wrote home about Ramsay from Rome on 2 January 1756, where Wood had joined his small circle of Scottish friends, 'the Caledonian Club', [3] 'As for his painting Cardinals I never heard any thing of it & indeed all he has painted since he left Edin to this day are, His wife, Mr. Wood, Abbé Grant, Mr. Burgoyne & myself, of which the first two only are finish'd, the others half done so that he has properly come to Italy to have the name of it.' [4] Mrs Ramsay is presumably the portrait of the artist's second wife, Margaret Lindsay, National Gallery of Scotland (430); Grant and Robert Adam are missing, as Ramsay's portrait of the latter is now believed to represent his brother James; [5]the Burgoyne is discussed under our copy of it, NPG 4158 (q.v.).
Condition:pentimenti in area of the quill and standish, which have been moved down and to the right; paint somewhat darkened and thin, mainly in the jacket and bottom left corner; cleaned, relined and varnished 1972 when a long extract from a biographical dictionary by Bird (?) and Rose, 1850, was removed from the back of the canvas.
Collections:bought 1972 from the sitter's descendant, Robert W. Wood.
Exhibited:'British Portraits', RA 1956 (225); 'Paintings and Drawings by Allan Ramsay', RA 1964 (38).
Literature:J. Fleming 'Allan Ramsay and Robert Adam in Italy', Connoisseur, CXXXVII, 1956, pp.78-84; J. Fleming, Robert Adam and His Circle, 1962; Sir Lewis Namier and J. Brooke, The House of Commons 1754-90 (History of Parliament), 1964.
Iconography
The only other single portrait is by Anton Raphael Mengs and is in the Bridgwater collection (121) among the pictures left by the sitter's pupil, the Duke of Bridgwater, to his nephew Earl Gower, later Marquess of Stafford, and Duke of Sutherland. [6] A double portrait of 1758 by Gavin Hamilton entitled 'James Dawkins and Robert Wood Esq.rs First discovering Sight of Palmyra' was engraved by John Hall in 1773. The painting was (c.1908) in the collection of Lt-Col. Dawkins, Over Norton House, Oxon.
Notes
1. Fleming, Robert Adam, p.350.
2. Namier and Brooke, III, p.657.
3. Fleming, Robert Adam, p.171.
4. Fleming, 'Allan Ramsay . . .’, p.82.
5. Exhibited 'Paintings and Drawings by Allan Ramsay 1713-84', RA 1964 (36).
6. Thereafter the collection is known as the Stafford Gallery, GEC II, p.354 and note (d)