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Dimensions: measurements note 51 by 41.5 cm., 20 by 16¼ in.
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Provenance: Sir Edmund Charles Nugent (1839-1928), 3rd Bt of Waddesdon, Berkshire;
His Sale, Puttick & Simpson London, 2 May 1929, lot 95
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Notes: THE PROPERTY OF AN IMPORTANT PRIVATE COLLECTION
This sitter was the only son and second child of William, 2nd Earl Cowper (1709-1764) and his wife, Lady Henrietta Nassau d' Auverquerque (c. 1713-1747), the younger daughter of Henry, Earl of Grantham, and his wife, Henrietta Butler, the daughter of the Earl of Ossory.
Lord Fordwich, as he was styled, embarked on a Grand Tour in 1757 but was forced to return to England by his father in 1759 and became M.P. for Hertford. However, following his father's death he returned to Italy. He played a very active role in Florentine society and was renowned for his lavish hospitality given at the Villa Palmieri on the slopes of Fiesole.
Lord Fordwich also spent his vast fortune amassing a collection of pictures by Renaissance, seventeenth century and contemporary artists. He enjoyed favour at the Grand-Ducal court and Lady Spencer wrote to him on the 23rd June 1772, 'I have the Queen's commands to recommend Zoffani a painter and a very ingenious man to your Lordship's protection, Her Majesty sends him to Florence & wishes to have him admitted into the Great Dukes Gallery'.[1]
He acted on this recommendation himself and is portrayed here by Zoffany standing on a hillside above Florence, perhaps intended to represent the grounds of his villa at Fiesole. In his right hand he raises a gold braided hat above his head, perhaps in jovial greeting to the artist Zoffany (and any subsequent viewer of the portrait). The cut of his waitscoat and the sword indicate that he may be wearing a uniform; if so it is likely to be court dress as worn at the Grand-Ducal court.
Lord Fordwich clearly established a close friendship with Zoffany who reportedly advised him on purchases for his collection. Indeed, he is portrayed pointing to the Niccolini-Cowper Madonna by Raphael which Zoffany holds in Zoffany's painting of The Tribuna of the Uffizi (Royal Collection). Fordwich also commissioned Zoffany to paint a larger version of this portrait (Private Collection), a portrait of his fianceé Anne Gore as a Savoyarde musician (Viscount Gage) and a large scale family portrait Lord Cowper and the Gore Family (Yale Center for British Art).
[1] As quoted in O. Millar, Zoffany and his Tribuna, 1966, p. 10.
