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Sir Oscar Clayton

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Sir Oscar Clayton, by Carlo Pellegrini, published in Vanity Fair 12 September 1874 -NPG 3265 - © National Portrait Gallery, London

© National Portrait Gallery, London

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Sir Oscar Clayton

by Carlo Pellegrini
Pencil and watercolour (and ?bodycolour) on blue paper, stuck down on old mount, published in Vanity Fair 12 September 1874
12 1/8 in. x 7 in. (307 mm x 178 mm) overall
NPG 3265

Inscriptionback to top

Signed in pencil, lower right: ‘Ape’.

This portraitback to top

When Oscar Clayton was made personal physician to younger members of the royal family in 1868, there were waspish remarks in the press, querying the sudden 'brilliant sunburst and the immortal fame of Dr. Clayton’s genius'. [1] He himself relished his 'extensive practice in the fashionable world', disproved jealous colleagues by his good care of the Prince of Wales in 1871, and died a rich man. But a whiff of the old criticism always hung about him, and it runs between the lines of the biographical commentary accompanying the print after NPG 3265, which was published in Vanity Fair on 12 September 1874. [2]

In the early 1870s the artist Carlo Pellegrini (‘Ape’) lived on the fringes of the Prince of Wales’s set, regarded as a somewhat 'amusing pet'. [3] Around this time the Prince commissioned him to produce caricatures of members of the Marlborough Club; [4] then, in 1873, there was a falling-out and Pellegrini returned to drawing for Vanity Fair. His caricature of Clayton belongs to that second, very productive period at the magazine. The artist Louise Jopling described his working methods:

Generally it was sufficient for [Pellegrini] to follow his intended victim about, for two or three days, and he would thus learn him by heart, and, in his Studio, with only the mental image of the man before his mind’s eye, he would produce the salient points that made a smile come to the lips of the observer, as he saw the cartoon of the week. [5]

Though Clayton’s expression is masked by his spectacles, Pellegrini’s drawing captures the mix of sharpness and joviality through the jaunty pose. [6] And in 1880, in a skit on the rise of the society doctor, the writer Edmund H. Yates described a man based on this very image: 'Gold-rimmed spectacles; hair carefully distributed by the brush ... a rosy, healthy face ... When Osric Claypole dines out [he] is the heartiest and merriest of companions'. [7]

This work was part of a collection of Vanity Fair drawings sold by Maggs Bros to the Gallery in 1934, at the ‘special price’ of £180 for 114 items. [8] It remains fixed to an old ruled and labelled mount. [9]

Carol Blackett-Ord

Footnotesback to top

1) See Medical Press and Circular, July–Dec. 1868, p.173.
2) ‘Jehu Junior’ (T.G. Bowles), ‘Men of the Day no. LXXXVII. Mr Oscar Clayton’, Vanity Fair, 12 Sept. 1874. For a reference to NPG 3265 see Ormond 1976, p.7. For a reproduction of the print see Sykes 1995, p.16.
3) Harris 1976.
4) The Marlborough Club was an exclusive smoking club founded by the Prince of Wales c.1868, with premises at 52 Pall Mall; it closed in 1945.
5) Jopling 1925, pp.251–2.
6) The details are accurate: the gold-framed spectacles and gold bands on the little finger, the curled sideburns and collar beard are also to be found in Frederick Goodall’s ‘straight’ portrait of Clayton; see ‘All known portraits, Paintings, drawings, sculptures and prints, exh. 1890’.
7) Yates 1880, p.540.
8) Maggs was paid by the Gallery on 20 Mar. 1934. For more information see NPG RP 2698–2746.
9) The mount is labelled ‘Mr Oscar CLAYTON, / September 12, 1874’.

Physical descriptionback to top

Whole-length to left, left hand in pocket, head turned to viewer, wearing spectacles and evening dress with white tie.

Conservationback to top

Conserved, 1985.

Provenanceback to top

Christie’s, Manson & Woods, 5 March 1912 (152); purchased from Maggs Bros, 24 March 1934.
.

Exhibitionsback to top

apparently not exh.

Reproductionsback to top

Copies of the print after NPG 3265
Chromolithograph by Vincent Brooks, Day & Son, Vanity Fair, 12 Sept. 1874; copies colls NPG D43657; RCP, 4569; and Wellcome L., London, no.1862i.

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