Lieutenant-General, Sir Thomas Drury, Bt of Overstone (1712-1759)
Thomas Hudson (Devonshire 1701 – Twickenham 1779)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1754
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
1700 x 1580 mm
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Belton House, Lincolnshire
NT 436119
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Lieutenant-General, Sir Thomas Drury, Bt of Overstone (1712-1759) by Thomas Hudson (Devonshire 1701 – Twickenham 1779), 1754. Inscribed twice on bottom left (original inscription below, given first); Sir Thomas Drury Baronet SR THOMAS DRURY BT/1754. A three-quarter-length portrait in brown gold edged coat, white waistcoat and breeches, seated in an interior. Baptised on 12 November 1712 at St. Andrew's Church, Holborn, London, he was the only son and heir of Thomas Drury of Colne, Essex and Joyce Beacon of Great Ilford, whose brother Thomas (d.1737), a brewer in Shoreditch, owned Wickham Hall, near Maldon, Essex, which (Sir) Thomas inherited, along with a fortune estimated at £230,000, along with the estate. He married Martha Tyrrell, daughter of Sir John Tyrrell, 3rd Bt of Hevon, Essex and Mary Dolliffe, daughter of Sir James Doliffe, in October 1737 at Somerset House Chapel, The Strand, London. He was MP for Maldon, 1741-7. They had two daughters: Mary Ann Drury (1740-1769), who married John Hobart, 2nd Earl of Buckinghamshire (1723-1793) and Jocosa Katherina Drury (1749-1772), who married as his first wife, Sir Brownlow Cust, 1st Baron Brownlow of Belton (1744-1807) and inherited £100,000 from her father as co-heiress with her elder sister. Their only brother, Thomas (1738-46), had died whilst still a child. Sir Thomas died on 19 January 1759 at age 46. This portrait is evidently the pendant, by Hudson, to that of the sitter's wife Martha Tyrrell and elder daughter Mary Ann Drury at Blickling (NT 355608), which is inscribed with their identities and the same year, 1754. This fact long went unrecognised, despite their similar format, character, and even framing, because for a long period the Blickling picture was, first banished to the attics because it was coming off its stretcher, and then, after its restoration, misattributed to Ramsay. Given that the two portraits were conceived together, however, it is puzzling that the present picture does not also contain the sitter's younger daughter, Jocosa Katherina Drury. In view of the fact that, though now only the portrait of a single figure, and taller than that of his wife and daughter at Blickling (probably because that canvas had to be shortened when it was put on a new stretcher), it is almost as broad, two possibilities suggest themselves: (a) the pictures were designed as exact pendants in size, and the younger daughter was excluded because further from marriageable age; or (b) that she was included, but was subsequently cut out, because she was a first wife and - unlike her sister, who was the same - had no survivors of her unmarried only daughter, Etheldred Anne Cust (1771-1788), to want her memory perpetuated. The awkward way in which Sir Thomas's feet are cut off might suggest that her figure once stood to the right of him.
Credit line
Belton House, The Brownlow Collection (acquired with the help of the National Heritage Memorial Fund by the National Trust in 1984)
Makers and roles
Thomas Hudson (Devonshire 1701 – Twickenham 1779), artist