Early Georgian Portraits Catalogue: Sackville

1st Viscount Sackville (1716-85)

Lord George Germain [1]; soldier and statesman; youngest son of Lionel Cranfield Sackville, 7th Earl and 1st Duke of Dorset; godson of George II; educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Dublin; MA, 1734; entered military service in Ireland, 1737; promoted lieutenant-colonel of the 28th foot, 1740, MP 1741-82, distinguished himself at Dettingen, 1743, and at Fontenoy, 1745, but dismissed the service for disobeying orders under Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick at Minden, 1759; court martialled, 1760, and his name erased from the privy council; re-instated by George III, 1765, and in the same year succeeded, after his father's death, to Knole; appointed vice-treasurer of Ireland, 1766, and secretary of state for the colonies, 1775-82; by the will of the widow of Sir John Germain, Bart, assumed the name of Germain and so called between 1770 and 1782; created Viscount Sackville of Drayton Manor, Northampton, 1782.

4910 By Nathaniel Hone, 1760
Miniature, watercolour on ivory backed with paper, 1 5/16 x 1 1/8 in. (34 x 29 mm) oval, sight measurements, in frame bordered with garnets; dark blue eyes, heavy grey eyebrows, low forehead, plump face, short grey wig; white cravat, scarlet jacket with buff facings and gold buttons, open, over grey steel cuirass; green background; lit from left.

Signed and dated: NH / 1760, the NH in monogram.

Identification, resting on comparison with authentic portraits, appears beyond dispute. The uniform is of the 2nd dragoon guards [2] of which he was colonel 1757-59.

Condition:good.

Collections:bought, 1972, through Leggatt's at Sotheby's, 27 November 1972, lot 147; previous history not known.

Literature:R.E.Rasp, A Descriptive Catalogue of . . .[casts] . . . by James Tassie,1791; G.F. Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain,1854-57; M.D. George and others, Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires . . . in the British Museum, 1870-1954; G. Goodwin, James McArdell,1903; H. Ward and W. Roberts, Romney,1904; C.J. Phillips, History of the Sackville Family (n.d.).

Appearance

'Inperson . . . tall, robust, and active.' [3]

Iconography

A three-quarter length type by Reynolds to whom Sackville sat in January 1759 [4] shows him in fur-lined uniform coat over cuirass with the head of a horse, right. An entry in the artist's ledger under first payment reads: 'Paid for February 7, 1761,Mr Bale for Lord George Sackville £21' and on the same date, under ‘R’: ‘Mr. Ross for Lord G. Sackville 42-0'. Another entry under 'S’, also 7February and probably a duplicate, records: 'Lord George Sackville for Mr Ross 42-0'. [5] The engraving in the first twostates by McArdell was published in 1759 (CS 161) and the third, as Lord George Germaine with a pillar instead of the horse's head, in 1777. [6] Two oils, 50 x 40 in., were still in the family in 1937 probably by descent from the sitter to his granddaughter Caroline Harriet who married, 1837, William Bruce Stopford of Drayton. The Stopfords assumed the additional name of Sackville in 1870. The better preserved of the two portraits was sold at Christie's, 18 June 1937, lot 121, as from Ardfert Abbey, co. Kerry, the old home of the Countess of Glandore, daughter of Caroline Harriet and William Bruce Stopford; the other, lent by W.B. Stopford to the 'NPE', 1867 (642), and by Captain N.V. Stopford Sackville to the 'Sir Joshua Reynolds' exhibition, Park Lane, 1937 (35), is still at Drayton Manor. 'Lord Geo Germain with horse 3/4to r. left to a niece, with breast plate by Reynolds. large', then owned by Mrs Croker, was noted by Scharf at Kensington Palace. [7]

In1778, there were sittings to Romney on 9, 15, 22 and 29 October and 5, 12 November [8] for the three-quarter length at Drayton in which Sackville stands at a table resting his hand on a paper with a castellated building (Drayton?) seen through the open window. The inkstand on the table and the artist's receipt of 1780 [9] are still there. The engraving of 1780 by Johann Jacobe (CS 3) as Lord George Germaine has To the King inscribed on the paper. A medallion catalogued by Rasp 'CORNELIAN. Mr. Tassie. A bust of Lord Sackville, formerly Lord George Germaine. Engraved by Brown after a model by J. Tassie' [10] refers presumably to the sulphur impression by W. Brown (1748-1825) exhibited at the RA, 1780 (238). The well-known portrait by Gainsborough at Knole is probably of c.1783-85. [11] Stated to have been purchased by the sitter's nephew John Frederick, 3rd Duke of Dorset (d.1799), [12] who succeeded to the title in 1769 from his uncle Charles Sackville, it passed after the death of his unmarried grandson Charles Sackville-Germain (1767-1843), 5th and last Duke of Dorset, to the Countess De La Warr and to the Barons Sackville, created 1876. [13] A caricature by J. Sayers, lettered in the form of an invitation Head Quarters Brookes's 18th July 1785 / You are to attack the Enemy's Propositions at six o'Clock, [14]appears to be the basis of the profile head engraved for the European Magazine that year. A whole length was listed, 1828, in the dressing-room at Milton Abbas, Dorset, seat of the sitter's niece Lady Caroline Damer, wife of Mr Baron Grant, of Scotland. [15] The estate passed to the children of the 1st Earl of Portarlington. A portrait of the sitter is included in the 'Death of Chatham' (q.v.) by Copley.

FALSE PORTRAITS

A pair, 30 x 25 in., attributed to Reynolds and engraved, 1820, by S.W. Reynolds, the man lettered Lord Cornwallis, have been called Lord George Sackville and his wife; the former is also stated to have been at Christie's, 19 May 1899, lot 94, bought Leggatt's. [16] The pair reappeared in the Cosmo Bevan sale, 10 November 1938, lots 179 and 180. Waterhouse suggests they may represent Sackville's ADC Captain Smith and his wife; the captain sat to Reynolds in 1758. [17] Another portrait by Reynolds, 30 x 25 in., with Leggatt's in 1914, also as Sackville, [18] is apparently the same as one sold in New York (American Art Association), 16 November 1933, collection of Sir Albert James Bennett, Bart, and again Parke-Bernet, 25 February 1943.

Notes

1. Sometimes spelt, especially in early records, ‘Germaine'.
2. Information from Major Dawnay.
3. DNB, VII, p.1114.
4. Leslie and Taylor, p.176.
5. Graves and Cronin, pp.857-58; Cormack, pp.133, 135.
6. Goodwin, p.63.
7. SSB, XXVII, p.47 (30 November 1880).
8. Ward and Roberts, II, p.59.
9. Phillips, II, p.138.
10. Rasp, II (14404).
11. Waterhouse, 1958 (592); exh. British Institution, 1815 (4), and 1859 (96); also ‘NPE', 1867 (658). See also Waagen, IV, p.338.
12. Phillips, II, p.420.
13. Cf GEC, IV, p.430; Burke, Peerage, 1967, pp.2185-86.
14. George, VI (6802); in failing health Sackville created a sensation when he returned from retirement to the House of Lords to oppose certain 'propositions' from the Irish parliament.
15. GEC, IV, p.408, note b, where she is stated to have died 1829, unmarried; Neale, X, states that Milton Abbas was purchased by Joseph Damer, a native of Ireland, afterwards Earl of Dorchester (d.1798), who married, 1742, Lady Caroline Sackville, sister of the sitter; the estate passed to their daughter, wife of Mr Baron Grant.
16. Graves and Cronin, p.858.
17. Waterhouse, 1941, p.46.
18. Photo in NPG archives.