William Cadogan, 1st Earl Cadogan

William Cadogan, 1st Earl Cadogan, by Unknown artist, after 1716 -NPG 18 - © National Portrait Gallery, London

© National Portrait Gallery, London

Later Stuart Portraits Catalogue

William Cadogan, 1st Earl Cadogan

attributed to Unknown artist
after 1716
62 1/2 in. x 46 1/2 in. (1588 mm x 1181 mm)
NPG 18

Inscriptionback to top

Later inscription, bottom right: Earl Cadogan.

This portraitback to top

Cadogan wears the ribbon of the Thistle, awarded in 1716. His white and parcel-gilt armour is from the Tower Armouries, whence he borrowed gilded ‘armour of Charles II’ in 1723 and 1725. [1] It is probably not a coincidence that he had been lieutenant of the Tower 1706-13 and was master general of the ordnance 1722-25.
A previous attribution to Louis Laguerre, based on the similarity of the head to one engraved by J. Simon after a portrait by Laguerre, is not altogether convincing.

Footnotesback to top

1) C. R. Beard, Connoisseur, XCIX, 1937, pp 269-70, the armour illus. p 270; repeated by C. Blair, ‘Notes on the History of the Tower of London Armouries 1821-55 - 1’, Jnl. of the Arms & Armour Soc., II, 1958, p 240.

Referenceback to top

Piper 1963
D. Piper, Catalogue of the Seventeenth Century Portraits in the National Portrait Gallery 1625-1714, 1963, pp 51-52 attributed to Laguerre.

Provenanceback to top

Shotover House1 sale, Farebrother, Clark & Lye, 5th day, 26 October 1856, lot 686 (‘Kneller, Half-length Portrait of Earl Cadogan in armour’); Henry Smart, from whom purchased 1857.

1 Undated note by William Smith (Chairman of Trustees) on file: Lord Cadogan/from Shotover. Shotover was built 1713-18 by James Tyrrell; it passed to the Schutz family, thence to G. V. Drury (d. 1850), whose creditors brought a Chancery Court case, Spickernell v Hotham and others, resulting in the Shotover sale.

Exhibitionsback to top

Jacobite Rising, Scottish NPG, 1965, n.n.


This extended catalogue entry is from the National Portrait Gallery collection catalogue: John Ingamells, National Portrait Gallery: Later Stuart Portraits 1685–1714, National Portrait Gallery, 2009, and is as published then. For the most up-to-date details on individual Collection works, we recommend reading the information provided in the Search the Collection results on this website in parallel with this text.

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