John Hume Egerton, Viscount Alford MP (1812-1851)
after Sir Francis Grant PRA (Kilgraston 1803 - Melton Mowbray 1878)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1851
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
1560 x 990 mm
Order this imageCollection
Belton House, Lincolnshire
NT 436169
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, John Hume Egerton, Viscount Alford MP (1812-1851), after Sir Francis Grant PRA (Kilgraston 1803 - Melton Mowbray 1878), 1851. A three-quarter-length portrait, standing, turned slightly to the left, gazing to the right, in morning dress with a landscape back ground, distant horizon with trees on the right. He was the elder son of John Cust, 1st Earl Brownlow (1779-1853), and his first wife, Sophia Hume (1787/8-1814) and married Lady Marianne Margaret Compton (1817-1888), eldest daughter of Spencer Joshua Alwyne Compton, 2nd Marquess of Northampton (1790-1851) and Margaret Douglas-Maclean-Clephane (d.1830) on 10th February 1841 who bore him two children: John William Spencer Egerton Cust, 3rd Baron and 2nd Earl Brownlow (1842-1867) and Adelbert Wellilngton Brownlow Cust, 4th Baron and last Earl Brownlow (1844-1921). John Hume Cust, changed his name in 1839 to John Hume Home-Cust and changed it again in 1849 to John Hume Egerton.He was an amateur sculptor (taught by Elisabeth Ney?), and a carving he made in 1848 entitled ‘Jacob wrestling with an angel’ used to occupy a niche over the fireplace in the Chapel Gallery (visible in one early photograph in the Belton archive). From his mother Sophia, who was the only child of Lady Amelia Egerton, the sister and heiress of the unmarried General John William Egerton, 7th Earl of Bridgwater (1753-1823), he inherited in 1849 the vast Egerton estates, worth some £70,000 a year. These included Ashridge Park in Hertfordshire. 'The prospect of owning Ashridge - a vast sprawling Gothic fantasy in the grand manner - must have appealed to the young Viscount, whose tastes ran to the medieval, as did those of so many Tory romantics reared on a diet of Ivanhoe and Kenilworth. Alford was one of the thirteen knights-in-armour who paid homage to the Queen of Love and Beauty before entering the lists at the famous - and rain-sodden - tournament at Eglington Castle in Ayrshire in August 1839. He was also instrumental in providing the crowds gathered to watch the jousting with the only moment of excitement in an otherside distrous affair. In the final 'grand equestrian melee with broadswords, the Marquess of Waterford hit him on the head, and hoth opponents lost their tempers and started whacking each other in earnest. The Knight Marshall had to step in and separate them'. (Adrian Tinniswood). He died on 3 January 1851 at age 38 at Ashridge Park, Berkhamsted and was buried on 13 January 1851 at Little Gaddesden, Hertfordshire.
Provenance
Purchased with a grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) from Edward John Peregrine Cust, 7th Baron Brownlow, C. St J. (b.1936) in 1984
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
after Sir Francis Grant PRA (Kilgraston 1803 - Melton Mowbray 1878), artist