Sir Matthew Fetherstonhaugh, 1st Bt, MP (1714-1774) as a Hunter with a Wild Boar Spear
Pompeo Girolamo Batoni (Lucca 1708 – Rome 1787)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1751 (signed and dated)
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
991 x 737 mm (39 x 29 in)
Place of origin
Rome
Order this imageCollection
Uppark House and Garden, West Sussex
NT 138266
Caption
We all like souvenirs of our holidays but Grand Tourist Sir Matthew Fetherstonhaugh took the concept a little further than most. As well as assembling one of the finest collections of Grand Tour paintings in Britain, many acquired during his travels on the continent with his wife, he was fond of a few portraits of himself and various relations en vacances. Here, he’s painted by Pompeo Batoni who specialised in painting foreign aristocrats, situating them in landscapes of famous sites and monuments in Rome and its countryside. Although the cachet of a Batoni portrait was perhaps the most sought after souvenir a Briton could hope to bring back from a trip to Rome, Italians at the time didn’t put much stock in the genre of portraiture. Sir Matthew, however, obviously enjoyed having his countenance stare back at him, as Batoni painted him on more than one occasion. He hung these likenesses alongside his other Grand Tour paintings at Uppark, where Horace Walpole archly remarked that there were ‘no tolerable pictures’.
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Sir Matthew Fetherstonhaugh,1st Bt, MP (1714-1774) as a Hunter with a Wild Boar Spear by Pompeo Girolamo Batoni (Lucca 1708 – Rome 1787), signed and dated, as inscribed on spearhead: P. B 1751. A half-length portrait, to left in a landscape, head facing, an archaic boar spear in his right hand, a dog by the collar in his left, wearing dark green coat edged with fur, yellow waistcoat and white stock. Perhaps portrayed as the hunter Endymion with his spear, loved by Diana, although Batoni was more interested in painting the luxuriously fur-trimmed hunting coat than in literal-minded allegory. Sir Matthew succeeded to the great fortune of a kinsman, Sir Harry Fetherstonhaugh, in 1746, when he bought Uppark and a baronetcy. In 1747 he married Sarah, daughter of Christopher Lethieullier, a director of the Bank of England. He was MP for Morpeth and Portsmouth, and became FRS in 1752. He was responsible for assembling the bulk of the collections at Uppark, much of them acquired when he travelled on the Continent with his wife, 1749-51, on which occasion their portraits were painted by Batoni. The appearance of the house today is largely due to his alterations.
Provenance
Presumably commissioned by the sitter; early 19th-century hanging-plans, in the Great Drawing Room: “I. Sir Matthew Fetherston [by] Pompeo Battoni” [overdoor to left of chimneypiece]: H. R. Bolton’s bill, 28 September 1849, in the Large Drawing Room: “19 Portrait of Sir Matthew Featherstone Bart. [by] P. Battoni”; 1874 inventory, in the Drawing Room, as: “Portrait of Sir Matthew Featherstone by Pompeo Battoni”; and thence by inheritance and descent, until accepted in lieu of tax on the death of Admiral the Hon. Sir Herbert Meade-Fetherstonhaugh (1875-1964) in 1965 and transferred to the National Trust by HM Treasury, September 1990
Credit line
Uppark, The Fetherstonhaugh Collection (National Trust)
Marks and inscriptions
Verso: Sr Mat F...Bart. of Uppark in Sussex Painted at Roome by Pompeo Battoni Anno 1751 (later inscription on stretcher)
Makers and roles
Pompeo Girolamo Batoni (Lucca 1708 – Rome 1787), artist
Exhibition history
Souvenirs of the Grand Tour, Wildenstein, London, 1982, no.1
References
Walpole, 1927-1928: Horace Walpole’s Journals of visits to country seats, &c. Ed. Paget Toynbee. Vol. 16. Walpole Society.1927-8. [Uppark pp.68-69]. Steegman 1946 J. Steegman, ‘Some English Portraits by Pompeo Batoni’, Burlington Magazine, vol. LXXXVIII, March 1946, no. 7 Gore 1969: F. St John Gore, 'Pictures in National Trust Houses', supplement to Burlington Magazine, Vol.cxi, No.793. April 1969, pp.239-58 Pompeo Batoni and his British Patrons, exh. cat. (listed by Edgar Peters Bowron & Francis Russell), Kenwood House, Hampstead, London 8 June - 30 August, 1982, no. 54/55 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, pp. 252 & 253 & pl. 145 Ford & Ingamells, 1997 Sir Brinsley Ford and John Ingamells. A Dictionary of British and Irish Travellers in Italy, 1701-1800. New Haven & London Published from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press, 1997, p. 354 Pompeo Batoni. Prince of Painters in Eighteenth-Century Rome (E. P. Bowron and Peter Björn Kerber), The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston 21 October 2007- 27 January 2008 & The National Gallery, London 20 February - 18 May 2008, Yale University Press, 2007, pp. 45 & 178 & fig. 43