Sir Squire Bancroft (né Butterfield)

Inscriptionback to top

Signed lower right: ‘Hy.F’.

This portraitback to top

Squire Bancroft was a member of the Garrick Club from 1869 and a member of the club’s committee from 1877. In his memoirs he wrote ‘gratefully of the many happy hours I have passed within its walls and of the many good friends I have made there’, going on to evoke social evenings in its smoking-room, card-room, billiard-room and hallway, and mentioning the names of non-theatrical fellow-members. [1]

Harry Furniss has observed Squire’s lanky frame folded into a chair, as he pages through one book on the table and another on his lap while looking up through his eyeglass to unseen companions, as if listening to conversation while also checking through the books.

This portrait was drawn for and published in Furniss [1915–16]; see NPG collection 4095(1–11). For other drawings and further information relating to Furniss’s career as an artist, see NPG collection 3337–3535, 3554–3620.

Dr Jan Marsh

Footnotesback to top

1) Bancroft & Bancroft 1888, vol.1, pp.277–9.

Physical descriptionback to top

Whole-length seated, profile to left (eyeglass in right eye), left hand holding open book on lap, right hand turning pages of book on table.

Provenanceback to top

Purchased with 10 others, 1959.

Reproductionsback to top

Furniss [1915–16], pl.2.

View all known portraits for Sir Squire Bancroft (né Butterfield)

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