George Edward Henry Arthur Herbert, 2nd Earl of Powis II (1755-1801)
Pompeo Girolamo Batoni (Lucca 1708 – Rome 1787)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1776 - 1777 (signed and dated)
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
1346 x 965 mm (53 x 38 in)
Place of origin
Rome
Order this imageCollection
Powis Castle and Garden, Powys
NT 1181071
Caption
George Herbert, 2nd Earl of Powis, succeeded his father in 1772 at the age of 17. Shortly after, he embarked on a Grand Tour of Italy, arriving in Rome in 1775. There, he met Pompeo Batoni, a fashionable portrait painter who was greatly in demand among aristocratic British tourists. The occasion on which this portrait was painted is documented in a letter sent by Father John Thorpe, an English Jesuit in Rome, to the 8th Lord Arundell of Wardour, in England. Dated 28 October 1776, the letter explains that ‘Pompeo Batoni…is now finishing a plain portrait of Lord Powis’. Such portraits by Batoni were transported back to Britain by those who commissioned them, to furnish the walls of large private residences like Powis. So influential was the artist in Rome that the painter Benjamin West, while visiting the city, complained that the Italian artists "talked of nothing, looked at nothing but the works of Pompeo Batoni".
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, George Edward Henry Arthur Herbert, 2nd Earl of Powis II (1755-1801) by Pompeo Batoni (Lucca 1708 – Rome 1787), signed and dated on the desk: POMPEO BATONI PINX ROMAE 1777. Inscribed on the letter held by the sitter: My / Lord Pow[is] Ro[m]a. A three-quarter-length portrait of the 2nd Earl of Powis, who succeeded his father Henry Arthur, 1st Earl of Powis, at the age of seventeen in 1772, in a green coat trimmed with gold, his left hand resting on a table. Three years later he set out on the Grand Tour. Inscription - Letter - Rome, 28th October, 1776, from Father Thorpe to Lord Arundell, 'Pompeo Batoni, who is now finishing a plain portrait of Lord Powis...'
Provenance
Painted in 1776, letter - Rome, 28th October, 1776, from Father Thorpe to Lord Arundell, 'Pompeo Batoni, who is now finishing a plain portrait of Lord Powis...'. by descent in hte family of the sitter to George Charles, 4th Earl of Powis. Recorded at Powis Castle in Montgomery Collections Vol VI P.148 in 1873. Accepted by HM Treasury on 21st March, 1963 in lieu of tax and conveyed to National Trust ownership in 1992.
Marks and inscriptions
Verso: in fairly late ink on lining canvas: George Edward Henry Arthur / Earl of Powis / By P. Battoni
Makers and roles
Pompeo Girolamo Batoni (Lucca 1708 – Rome 1787), artist
References
Steegman 1957 John Steegman, A Survey of Portraits in Welsh Houses, Vol.I: North Wales, Cardiff, 1957, no. 44 Steegman 1946 John Steegman, ‘Some English Portraits by Batoni’, The Burlington Magazine, LXXXVIII, March 1946, pp.55-63, p. 63, no. 79 Clark and Bowron 1985 Anthony M. Clark & Edgar Peters Bowron (ed.), Pompeo Batoni A Complete Catalogue of his Works with an Introductory Text, Oxford 1985, p. 343, No. 399, Pl. 361.