Saint Gregory, Saint Ambrose, Saint Augustine and Saint Jerome: Four Fathers/Doctors of the Latin Church
Sir James Thornhill (Woolland 1675 - Stalbridge 1734)
Category
Art / Wall paintings
Date
1724 (signed and dated)
Materials
Oil on plaster
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Wimpole, Cambridgeshire
NT 207911
Caption
This painting is set within the great Baroque interior of the chapel at Wimpole, which was created in the 1720s for Lord Harley, despite the fact that the parish church lay only a few yards away. It may have been conceived in conscious rivalry of the Duke of Chandos’s famous chapel at Canons. The chapel was designed by Gibbs, whose earliest drawings date from 1713. On the north wall of the chapel, niches house gilded ‘statues’ of the four Doctors of the Church – Gregory, Ambrose, Augustine and Jerome – a near repetition of Thornhill’s decoration of the chapel at All Soul’s College, Oxford.
Summary
Oil painting on plaster, Saint Gregory, Saint Ambrose, Saint Augustine and Saint Jerome by Sir James Thornhill (Melcombe Regis 1675 - Stalbridge 1734), signed on the lintel to the glazed door leading into the Entrance Hall: Iac: Thornhill Esq Faciebat 1724. Trompe l'oeil (deceive the eye) painting on walls above panelling in the chapel. Niches housing four gilded monochrome grisaille painted statues of the four Doctors of the Church.
Provenance
Painted by Sir James Thornhill for Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford (1689-1741) for the sum of £1350; bequeathed by Elsie Kipling, Mrs George Bambridge (1896 - 1976), daughter of Rudyard Kipling, to the National Trust together with Wimpole Hall, all its contents and an estate of 3,000 acres
Credit line
Wimpole Hall, The Bambridge Collection (National Trust)
Makers and roles
Sir James Thornhill (Woolland 1675 - Stalbridge 1734), artist