Charles Howard, 11th Duke of Norfolk

This portraitback to top

The complex paint structure of NPG 5294 would confirm that it is the portrait Gainsborough was working on between 1784 and 1786. He exhibited an incomplete portrait of Lord Surrey in Schomberg House in July 1784; ‘the head only is finished. His Lordship is to be painted in a dress of the last century’. [1] The portrait was still in hand in April 1786; Gainsborough exhibited it in the autumn of that year, when it was considered a fine portrait, though the costume was twice criticised: once for not being crimson, and once for detracting from the likeness. [2] Lord Surrey had been nominated in 1782 deputy Earl Marshal to his father, whom he succeed as 11th Duke on 31 August 1786. NPG 5294 shows him as a Duke and Earl Marshal, with his coronet, robes, arms and baton, all of which must have been added to the original composition.

Footnotesback to top

1) W. T. Whitley, Thomas Gainsborough, 1915, p 227.
2) Ibid., pp 259, 265.

Referenceback to top

Waterhouse 1953
E. K. Waterhouse, ‘Preliminary Check List of Portraits by Thomas Gainsborough’, Wal. Soc., XXXIII, 1953, p 80.

Waterhouse 1958
E. K. Waterhouse, Gainsborough, 1958., no.517.

Physical descriptionback to top

Blue eyes, short dark hair, wearing dark purple Van Dyck dress with black breeches, gold garters and gold buckles on his shoes; he holds the Earl Marshal’s gold baton in his right hand; grey, gold-fringed gloves on and in his left hand; his Peer’s robes to the left and, to the right, a ducal coronet and the Norfolk arms¹ displayed on a stone pediment.

¹ Perfunctorily painted to show: quarterly, 1st, HOWARD; and 3rd, WARREN, but the 2nd and 4th quarterings for BROTHERTON and FITZALAN, are scarcely legible; below, the motto: SOLA VIRTU[S INVICTA]; there is also a dark illegible escutcheon of pretence, presumably intended for SCUDAMORE of Holm Lacy, of which the Duke’s second wife, Frances, was heiress [de facto: quarterly, 1 & 4 gu., three stirrups leathered and buckled or; 2 & 3 or, a cross pattée fitchée gu ].

Provenanceback to top

By descent at Arundel Castle; accepted by H. M. Treasury in lieu of capital transfer tax and allocated to the NPG 1980.

Exhibitionsback to top

Arundel Castle 1980-.

Reproductionsback to top

J. K. Sherwin 1790.


This extended catalogue entry is from the out-of-print National Portrait Gallery collection catalogue: John Ingamells, National Portrait Gallery: Mid-Georgian Portraits 1760-1790, National Portrait Gallery, 2004, 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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