Literature
W. Hogarth, Anecdotes of William Hogarth, written by himself, London, 1833, p.387.
W. Chaffers, Catalogue of the Works of Antiquity and Art collected by the late William Henry Foreman Esq., Pippbrook House, Dorking, and removed in 1890 to Callaly Castle, printed privately, 1892, pp.25 and 296.
M. Webster, Hogarth, London, 1979, no.163.
J.C. Greene, 'Henry Mossop', in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, 2004, XXXIX, pp.486-7.
To be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the works of William Hogarth, currently being prepared by Dr. Elizabeth Einberg.
Provenance
John Inigo Richards, R.A. (1731-1810), the artist's godson; his estate sale, Squibb's, London, 12 March 1811, lot 97.
Robert Graves; Baker & Sotheby's, London, 16-25 June 1825, an added lot (sold to Thomas S. Foreman).
Thomas S. Foreman;
William Henry Foreman (the above's son), of Pippbrook House, Dorking, Surrey;
Mrs Burt (the above's aunt), and by descent within her family to,
Major A.H. Browne, Callaly Castle, Northumberland, and by descent to,
Angus A. Browne; Christie's, London, 14 July 1989, lot 109 (£49,500 to the current owner).
Notes
The following collection of British Pictures were formed by Senator and Mrs. Douglas D. Everett of Canada. It includes fine examples by artists that dominated the British Art Scene during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Douglas Everett's interest in British Art began when he was serving as midshipman on secondment from the Royal Canadian Navy, in the battleship HMS Nelson then stationed at Portland in Dorset. During this time, the closing years of World War II, he spent his shore leave in London, visiting museums and scouring the auction houses, and developed a life-long interest in Britain and its cultural past.
The drawings and watercolours from this collection will be included in a British Art on Paper sale on 16 November, and the Victorian and Traditionalist pictures in a sale on 22 November.
PROPERTY OF THE HONOURABLE AND MRS DOUGLAS D. EVERETT
Henry Mossop, actor and theatre manager, was born in Co. Galway, Ireland in 1727. The son of a clergyman, Mossop was originally destined for the church, however, while being brought up in Dublin by his uncle, he became increasingly attracted to the theatre. Mossop made his acting debut in the Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin in November 1749, playing Zanga in Edward Young's The Revenge. Having built up a reputation in Dublin, Mossop travelled to London in 1750/51, where he made his first appearance at Garrick"s Drury Lane in September 1751 as Richard III. Apart from a brief period in Dublin, between 1754 and 1755, Mossop made regular appearances at Drury Lane up until 1759. He returned to Dublin on the death of his father that year, never to return to the London stage, and went on to become a successful actor manager, overseeing several establishments (including Smoke Alley Theatre and Crow Street Theatre).
Mossop performed the role of Bazajet in Nicholas Rose's play Tamerlane in his first season at Drury Lane in 1751. During this season, Mossop also performed Horatio in The Fair Penitent, Theseus in Phaedra and Hippolitus, Macbeth and Wolsey in Henry VIII. The conflict between Tamerlane, the brutal Mongol ruler of Samarkand, and the Ottoman sultan Bajazet formed the basis of one of the earliest tragedies, Tamburlaine [sic] the Great by Christopher Marlowe in 1588. An Italian Opera on the subject was performed at the King's Theatre in 1724.
The Harvard Theatre Collection holds a full-length engraving of Mossop as Bazajet by an unknown artist (Fig.1). The only other roles in which Mossop appears to have been engraved were Zanga in The Revenge and Osmyn in The Mourning Bride, an indication of the popularity of his performances in these three roles. The Garrick Club owns a shoulder-length portrait of Henry Mossop, and a painting of Stephen Kemble as Bajazet by Nicholas Rowe (G. Ashton, Pictures in the Garrick Club, London, 1997, p.323, no.616, and p.218, no.393 respectively).
An old label, formerly on the reverse of the painting, written by an unknown hand, reads: 'This sketch (in size) I saw when a boy, made by Hogarth, in a fit of pleasantry, one evening in the Painting Room at Covent Garden Theatre...'. The Painting Room at Covent Garden Theatre was the original meeting place for a society known as The Sublime Society of Beefsteaks, which was founded on 11 January 1734/5 by the famous theatrical manager John Rich, together with twenty-three of his friends. Among the original members were George Lambert, who was painting scenery for Rich at the time, Ebenezer Forrest, the proprietor of Lincoln's Inn Theatre, William Huggins, the translator, who was also Keeper of the private lodgings at Hampton Court and Warden of the Fleet Prison, together with Robert Scott, John Thornhill, William Tothall, and Hogarth.
The Society met on Saturdays between October and June, wearing a ribbon and a gridiron-shaped badge, bearing the motto 'Beef and Liberty' and the date 1735. The Song of the Day had the rousing chorus of: 'O joyful theme of Britons free, Happy in Beef and Liberty'. Beefsteak was obviously the dish of the day, and the elaborate proceedings were in the charge of the President and his officials. Practical jokes and hoaxes seem to have been the Club's main occupations. Hogarth not only painted portraits of the society's members, but frequently made drawings and prints or posters of their antics. According to the old label formerly on the reverse, it must have been on one of these occasions that Hogarth painted the 'Turk's head'. The piece is executed in painter's distemper (an aqueous paint, usually used for scenery, composed of pigments held together by animal glue or casein), presumably easily to hand because of the venue of the gathering, and on a box-lid, which was later cut at the corners and made up on all four sides.
There was a great vogue for Turkish figures in the early and middle part of the eighteenth century, not only in England but on the Continent as well. These featured in comedies, in paintings, and were also frequently used as the name of a pub. Perhaps the most famous of these was the 'Turk's Head' tavern in Gerrard Street, which was the meeting place for the group of painters, of whom Hogarth was one, whose intention it was to found a state academy, an ambition realised on 13 November 1753. The famous Turk's Head bagnio in Covent Garden was the setting of Scene V in Hogarth's Marriage a la Mode (1743, London, National Gallery).
Hogarth drew artistic inspiration and patronage from the Theatre throughout his career. His first major success as a painter was a series of paintings based on a scene from John Gay's humorous ballad opera The Beggar's Opera (1728-1731, Tate, London). He became a good friend of the actor, writer and producer David Garrick, who collected Hogarth's works and dedicated one of his plays to him. In c.1742, Hogarth painted Garrick in one of his most famous performances as Richard III for Thomas Duncombe of Duncombe Park, Yorkshire (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool).
The early 1750s, when this picture was executed, saw the publication of Hogarth's most substantial and controversial theoretical work, The Analysis of Beauty (1753), in which he deliberately challenged the sanctioned idealism of academic painting. Hogarth also rejected the idea of an artist's academy along continental lines, which led to his gradual estrangement from the St. Martin's Lane artists. In challenging the superiority of the continental example of painting, chiefly that of the Italian and French schools, Hogarth set himself up as one of the leaders of a national school of painting. His artistic talents continued to be recognised and he was appointed Sergeant-Painter to the King in 1757. While Hogarth's earlier portraits (from the 1730s and 1740s) followed the grand-manner of portraiture, as exemplified by the work of his contemporary Jean-Baptiste van Loo, who arrived in London in late 1737, Hogarth's portraits of this later period are based on fewer sittings with minimal trappings.
This picture was in the collection of Hogarth's godson, the landscape and scene-painter John Inigo Richards (1730/31-1810). Richards' father, also a scene-painter, assisted Hogarth with the mural decorations for St. Bartholomew's Hospital in 1737. Richards studied under George Lambert, landscape and scene-painter, and one of the founding members of The Sublime Society of Beefsteaks. In 1759, Richard's worked with Nicholas Thomas Dall and Giovanni Battista Cipriani on scenery for Covent Garden productions and later, in 1792, assisted in the rebuilding of the interior of Covent Garden Theatre. This picture was later in the possession of the Foreman family (from 1825), along with Hogarth's The Staymaker, The Fairies Dancing and Satan, Sin and Death, from which it descended to Major A.J. Browne, Callaly Castle. The Browne family acquired Callaly, described by Pevsner as 'One of the most interesting and varied houses in Northumberland' (Northumberland, London, 1992, p.207), in 1877, and Major Browne undertook an extensive remodelling and enlargement programme of the seventeenth century castle in 1890, under the architect James Stevenson of Berwick. This picture was by descent in the Browne family until 1989.
VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price and at 17.5% on the buyer's premium.
