Giuseppe Baretti

This portraitback to top

The original portrait by Reynolds, painted in 1773, was commissioned by Henry Thrale, who had employed Baretti that year as a tutor in Spanish and Italian for his children; it first hung in the library at Streatham and is now in a private collection. [1] For Reynolds, Baretti was a gentleman of ‘a peaceable, quiet disposition’, exceedingly near sighted. [2] To some extent his portrait was a response both to the portrait by Barry exhibited in 1773 and to popular criticism of Baretti who, acquitted on a murder charge in 1769, had been termed a ‘notorious Italian bloody minded sycophant’. [3]
NPG 6248 is apparently an early copy; Steegman recorded a traditional attribution to Reynolds’s pupil William Doughty, but there is no proof. Copies include one inscribed as by James Northcote (Christie’s, 22 November 1985, lot 124), another descended through the family of Sir Robert Chambers, and a grisaille in the John Herron Art Institute, Indianapolis. [4] Copies in miniature are recorded by John Bogle (Christie’s, 12 October 1982, lot 60), George Engleheart 1793, [5] and Peter Paillou (Sotheby’s, 9 April 1992, lot 170).

Footnotesback to top

1) Formerly at Holland House; D. Mannings, Sir Joshua Reynolds, I, 2000, no.107; exhibited RA 1774 (224); British Institution 1843 (52); Second special exhibition of National Portraits (William and Mary to MDCCC), South Kensington, 1867 (576) lent Lady Holland; Boswell, NPG, 1967 (59); Joshua Reynolds, RA, 1986 (85); engraved J. Watts 1780; J. Hardy 1794; W. Bromley 1789 and S. W. Reynolds.
2) See D. Robinson in G. Sutherland ed., British Art 1740-1820, 1992, pp 81-94.
3) Morning Chronicle, 30 April 1773 (W. L. Pressly, The Life and Art of James Barry, 1981, p 69).
4) See D. Mannings, Sir Joshua Reynolds, I, 2000, nos.107a-107k.
5) G. C. Williamson & H. L. D. Engleheart, George Engleheart, 1902, pp 48, 53, illus. f.p.52.

Referenceback to top

Mannings 2000
D. Mannings, Sir Joshua Reynolds, 2 vols., 2000, no.107g.

Physical descriptionback to top

Wearing a grey coat, lightly powdered dark hair, sitting in a red-upholstered chair; a red-stone ring on the little finger of his left hand; a maroon curtain behind him.

Provenanceback to top

Possibly bought from Thomas Weaver by the 2nd Baron Kenyon c.1841¹; by descent to the 5th Baron Kenyon,² by whom bequeathed 1993.

¹ A letter from Weaver to Lord Kenyon, dated 15 January 1841 (faded photostat in NPG archive), alleged he had acquired a portrait of Baretti, possibly NPG 6248, at the sale of the artist Boultbee (not recorded in Lugt).
² Listed at Gredington by J. Steegman, Portraits in Welsh Houses, I, p 159, no.71.

Exhibitionsback to top

Art Treasures, Wrexham, 1876 (307).


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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