Robert Marsham, FRS (1708-1797)
after Johann Zoffany, RA (Frankfurt am Main 1733 - Kew 1810)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1761
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
905 x 690 mm
Order this imageCollection
Felbrigg, Norfolk
NT 1401280
Caption
The sitter was the squire of Stratton Strawless, and a friend of William II Windham of Felbrigg. He was a passionate planter and cultivator of trees, and corresponded with the naturalist, Gilbert White, on botanical issues. He was particularly proud of having planted an oak at the age of twelve, whose circumference was 12 ½ feet in his own lifetime, although his favourite trees were beeches, whose growth, he believed, was improved by washing their trunks. The original of around 1761 is at Hardingham Hall.
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Robert Marsham, FRS (1708-1797) after Johann Zoffany, RA (Frankfurt am Main 1733 - Kew 1810), inscribed Robert Marsham 1761. Half length seated portrait of Robert Marsham in a heavy coat leaning on a table with his right hand, a numbered list lies on the table. Squire of Stratton Strawless, friend of William Windham II and Benjamin Stillingfleet, and correspondent in his old age of Gilbert White of Selborne, Marsham was a passionate planter and cultivator of trees. He was particularly proud of having planted an oak at the age of twelve whose height was 122 feet in his own lifetime, though his favourite trees were beeches, whose growth, he believed, was improved by washing their trunks. The original of this portrait was painted around 1761, and is at Hardingham Hall. The present picture, like a copy elsewhere of another Zoffany, of Stillingfleet, seems to have come from Rippon Hall, which belonged to a junior line of the Marshams.
Full description
Robert Marsham had a strong rapport (a friendship that lasted for 59 years) with Felbrigg Hall through the friendship with William Windham II, his tutor Benjamin Stillingfleet, William Windham III and his land agent, Nathaniel Kent. In the Book Room at Felbrigg Hall, there is a portrait of ‘Robert Marsham, FRS (1708-1797), after Johann Zoffany, RA (Frankfurt am Main 1733 - Kew 1810)’. The provenance of this portrait is unknown, as searching through the 18th and 19th century inventories, it does not mention Robert Marsham’s portrait in the house. However, there has been a few mentions of Robert Marsham in the William Windham III diary and in ‘Felbrigg, the story of the house’: ‘Stillingfleet lived for the great part of 1754 and 1755 at Stratton Strawless near Norwich, where the squire, Robert Marsham, was an enthusiastic botanist and a most assiduous planter of trees.’- Felbrigg, The Story of The House, pp146. In 1796, William Windham III recorded in his diary: ‘27th May 1796, Finished address in time for press. Dined at Aylsham calling in way at Stratton Mr. Marsham far eighty-ninth year: Mrs. Lucy, eighty-six.’ Robert Marsham most likely recommended the land agent Nathaniel Kent to Windham III. ‘Windham had placed the management of his estate in the capable hands of Nathaniel Kent, a professional agent and agricultural improved well known at that time. Kent was a friend of Stillingfleet and Marsham, who no doubt recommended him to Windham; and during many years of his supervision of Felbrigg he lived in Marsham’s neighbourhood at Rippon Hall. As an enthusiastic disciple of Marsham, he was concerned that owners should take full advantage of the timber-growing potentialities of their estates and bring their woods into a proper rotation of planting and felling.’ - Felbrigg, The Story of The House, pp173
Provenance
Part of the Windham Collection. The hall and contents were bequeathed to the National Trust in 1969 by Robert Wyndham Ketton-Cremer (1906-1969)
Makers and roles
after Johann Zoffany, RA (Frankfurt am Main 1733 - Kew 1810), artist