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Artist or Maker: Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A. (1769-1830)
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Provenance: Commissioned from the artist in 1820 by Wellington's close friends, Mr and Mrs Charles Arbuthnot and by descent to;
A. Arbuthnot, Christie's, London, 29 June 1878, lot 88 (815 guineas to Davis on behalf of Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery).
Albert Primrose, 6th Earl of Rosebery; his sale, Christie's, London, 5 May 1939, lot 81 (1100 guineas to Agnew's on behalf of W.U. Goodbody).
W.U. Goodbody, and by inheritance to the present owner.
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Exhibited: London, Royal Academy, 1822, no. 134.
London, British Institution, 1865, no. 169 (lent by General Arbuthnot).
London, Royal Academy, Old Masters, 1896, no. 16 (lent by the Earl of Rosebery).
Eton, Eton Quincentenary Exhibition, 4-25 June 1947, no. 18.
London, Thomas Agnew & Sons Ltd., Loan Exhibition of Paintings by Sir Thomas Lawrence, 17 May - 23 June 1951, no.30.
Bristol, City Art Gallery, Exhibition of Works by Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A., 5 July - 31 August 1951, no. 28 (lent by Mrs W.U. Goodbody).
On loan to the Ministry of Works, Treasury Buildings, Old Council Room, London, 1951, at the time of the conference of Commonwealth ministers (lent by Mrs Goodbody).
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Literature: Letter from the Duke of Wellington to Mrs Arbuthnot, November 1820.
Letter from the Duke of Wellington to the Duchess of Northumberland, 13 May 1837.
Lord R.S. Gower, Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A., London, 1900, pp. 60-62 & 165.
Sir W. Armstrong, Lawrence, London, 1913, p. 169.
Lord G. Wellesley and J. Steegman, The Iconography of the Duke of Wellington, London, 1935, p. 28, no.5, fig. 25.
The Journal of Mrs Arbuthnot, edited by Francis Bamford and the Duke of Wellington, I, London, 1950, pp. 25, 41 & 58-59.
Daily Telegraph and Morning Post, 8 December 1952 (Peterborough column).
The Oban Times, 13 December 1952.
K. Garlick, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Oxford, 1989, p. 279, no. 805e.
M. Levey, Sir Thomas Lawrence, New Haven and London, 2005, pp. 26-27.
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Notes: W. Dean Taylor, 1827.
S. Cousins, R.A., Mezzotint, 1828.
J.R. Jackson.
Raphael Ward.
E. McInnes, 1844.
F. Smith, 1848.
THE PROPERTY OF A LADY
This is one of Sir Thomas Lawrence's most celebrated portraits of the Duke of Wellington and one of the most successful and revealing portraits by any artist to whom the Duke sat. A forceful example of Lawrence's mastery and the talent which had made him the heir to Sir Joshua Reynolds as the pre-eminent portrait painter in England, this portrait comes as close as any to penetrating Wellington's aura of heroism and capturing the essence of the man.
The Duke of Wellington had first sat to Lawrence in the summer of 1814, in the wake of his victorious Peninsular Campaign against Napoleon's armies in Portugal and Spain. The challenge for Lawrence, Wellington's exact contemporary, was how to represent the greatest military hero of the day, a man feted as Europe's military saviour. In total Lawrence was to execute eight portraits of Wellington over a period of fifteen years and it is perhaps these portraits more than those of any other artist that have defined Wellington in visual terms for posterity.
Lawrence's first portraits of Wellington, respectively commissioned by Lord Charles Stewart, later 3rd Marquess of Londonderry, Wellington's one-time Adjutant-General who had served with him during the Peninsular Campaign, and the Prince Regent, are both ambitious and heroic full-lengths, in which the influence of Reynolds's portraits of famous military figures can be clearly discerned. The latter, conceived on a large scale (124 1/2 x 96 in.) and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1815, shows the Duke holding aloft the Sword of State which he carried at the thanksgiving service held at St Paul's Cathedral following Napoleon's final defeat at Waterloo on the 7th July 1815 (Royal Collection). In it Wellington proudly stands, adorned with the multiple honours bestowed upon him by the grateful rulers of Europe. Lawrence's translation of Wellington's heroism was to culminate in another majestic full-length portrait conceived on a grand scale (156 x 96 in.) which was commissioned by Henry, 3rd Earl Bathurst (1762-1834), Secretary of State for War and the Colonies (1812-27), and begun in 1817. In the Bathurst portrait, Wellington is shown mounted on his celebrated charger Copenhagen on the field of Waterloo in the uniform he wore at the battle (private collection).
When, however, the Duke came to commission a portrait from Lawrence for himself, he was content with a less obviously heroic representation, reflecting perhaps as Andrew Roberts has commented his being 'very vain about his lack of vanity' (Roberts, Napoleon and Wellington, London, 2001, p.110). The resulting portrait (Apsley House, London) has more in common with the understatement which characterises the portrait which Francisco de Goya had executed of him in Madrid after the Battle of Salamanca in 1812 (see fig.2). On a more human and less grandiose format (36 x 28 in.) compared to the portraits Lawrence had executed previously, it shows Wellington in military uniform and with the Star and Ribbon of the Order of the Garter, and the Golden Fleece ribbon. The Apsley House picture is perhaps the greatest of all of Lawrence's portraits of Wellington steering, as Michael Levey comments, 'adroitly between extremes of grandeur and ordinariness, managing to convey - without any hint of swaggering - an air of supreme self-confidence' (op.cit, p. 26).
The present portrait, commissioned in 1820 by Wellington's close friends Charles and Harriet Arbuthnot, whom he had met in Paris in 1814, was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1822. Charles Arbuthnot (1767-1850), a diplomat and politician, had served in important roles in Sweden and Portugal, and for a short while as Under Secretary for Foreign affairs, before the diplomatic assignment for which he is chiefly remembered, as Ambassador Extraordinary to Constantinople. There he was involved in diplomatic duelling with Napoleon's envoy General Sebastiani which resulted ultimately in the British fleet forcing the Dardanelles. He subsequently returned to England to become Joint Secretary of the Treasury, but his influence extended beyond his formal government role on account of his popularity across the political spectrum. Grenville commented in his memoirs that he was 'more largely mixed up with the principal people and events of his time than any other man'. One of Wellington's closest friends, he married as his second wife Harriet Fane, daughter of the Hon. Henry Fane, of Fulbeck Hall, Lincolnshire, second son of the 8th Earl of Westmoreland, who was herself to become one of Wellington's closest confidantes. After her premature death in 1835, Charles Arbuthnot was to live the remaining fifteen years of his life in the company of Wellington at the Duke's London home, Apsley House.
Twenty-six years her husband's junior, Harriet Arbuthnot thrived on the political world that her marriage opened up to her and politics became the passion of her life. A staunch Tory, her vivacity is clearly conveyed in the portrait of her which Lawrence exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1817, the current whereabouts of which is unknown, but which is known from an engraving (Garlick, op.cit., no.42). Her diaries, eventually published long after her death, in 1950, shed light on many of the principal figures of the day including Canning, Castlereagh, Wellington, Liverpool and Peel. The intimate portrait that she gives of Wellington, in which she shows herself to be affectionate and admiring of him but not blind to his imperfections, did much to balance other accounts which had often cast him as cold and unapproachable. In her diaries he appears, although plain spoken, as good natured and popular with his friends and even shows himself open to her political opinions.
The present work stands out among Lawrence's portraits of Wellington for the plainness of its conception and its intimacy, which seems to reflect the close relationship between Wellington and the Arbuthnots, and mirrors to an extent the private side of the hero which Harriet Arbuthnot reveals in her diaries. Unlike the more obviously heroic portraits that had preceded it, the Duke is shown in civilian clothes rather than military uniform, and a military cloak, with only the inclusion of the Insignia of the Golden Fleece (a unique honour for somebody neither royal nor Roman Catholic) alluding directly to the scale of his military achievements. In her diary Harriet Arbuthnot recorded that 'The Duke of Wellington is going to sit to Lawrence for us' in an entry on the 22 June 1820 and later that year mentioned that 'the Duke had been sitting for our picture to Lawrence...' (8 October 1820; op.cit., pp. 25 and 41). The portrait was finished by the end of the year and Harriet Arbuthnot, who had not seen it before, recorded her reaction to it in her diary. Not only was she 'delighted with it' but she considered it 'more like him than any picture I ever saw of him and quite different...' remarking that while 'All other pictures of him depict him as a hero.' this portrait 'has all the softness and sweetness of countenance which characterises him when he is in the private society of his friends' and noting also that 'the cloak is just like the Duke wears it, and the hand remarkably like!' (op.cit. pp. 58-9).
The Duke shared her enthusiasm for the portrait, writing to her in November 1820 that it 'is as good as any Lawrence ever painted' and later to the Duchess of Northumberland in a letter of 13 May 1837 that 'Mr. Arbuthnot's picture is one of the best if not the best that he ever painted'. His favourable reaction to it was reflected in the fact that, in the form of the mezzotint by Cousins, it was the portrait of himself that he chose most often when giving likenesses of himself to favoured friends, thereby becoming one of the best known images of him.
The portrait remained in the possession of the Arbuthnot family until it was sold at Christie's in 1878, when it was acquired by Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery (1847-1929). Rosebery, who had married Hannah de Rothschild, daughter of Baron Mayer de Rothschild, and reputedly the richest heiress in England, in March that year, was to form a celebrated collection of historical portraits, while pursuing a political career that culminated in him becoming Prime Minister in 1894. The portrait was later sold by Archibald, 6th Earl of Rosebery at Christie's in May 1939, as one of the highlights of an important collection of pictures, when it was acquired by W.U. Goodbody, in the possession of whose family it has remained since.
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