Sir John Chardin with an unknown male attendant

This portraitback to top

Chardin points to Persia on a map of the Levant held up by his black servant; the names of [P]ERSI[A], ANATOLIA, ARABIAN and MARE DELLA CASPITUM remain legible. [1] The sitter was identified by Malcolm Rogers on comparison with the coarser version presented by the sitter’s son, Sir John Chardin Bt., in 1746 to the Ashmolean Museum (A17), [2] inscribed Anno 1711/AEtatis 68 and possibly painted expressly for presentation. NPG 5161, a superior painting and evidently by a different hand, may have been the original portrait. The inscription on the Oxford portrait may indicate the date.

Footnotesback to top

1) This map does not relate to that in the 1686 edition of Chardin’s Travels.
2) Complete Illus. Cat., 2004, p 29. Mrs R. L. Poole, Catalogue of Portraits in the possession of the University, Colleges, City and County of Oxford, I, p 186, no.453 as attributed to Bartholomew Dandridge; in an ornate frame; currently on loan to the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford.

Referenceback to top

Simon & Saywell (eds.) 2004
Complete Illustrated Catalogue, NPG, ed. J. Simon & D. Saywell, 2004, p 115 as 1700-05.

Provenanceback to top

Grenville family (possibly from Stowe); Mme Anne Dirkse-van-Schalkwyk;¹ Christie’s, 30 September 1977, lot 132 as ‘Portrait of a Gentleman possibly of the Grenville family, by Dahl’, bought Leggatt for the NPG.

¹ Who wrote ‘I had always thought it to be a painting of a member of our Family - The Grenvilles’ (letter of 24 November 1977, on file). Her father, the Rev L. C. F. T. Morgan-Grenville (1889-1944), Master of Kinloss (and grandson of the 3rd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, 1823-89), had been one of the three vendors of Stowe in 1921 (with his mother, the Baroness Kinloss, and the Trustees of the Will of the 3rd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos) and was thought to have acquired the portrait from Stowe, but it did not appear in the Stowe sale (5-28 July 1921).


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.

View all known portraits for Sir John Chardin