Humphry Morice (1723 - 1785)
Pompeo Girolamo Batoni (Lucca 1708 – Rome 1787)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1761 - 1762
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
1175 x 1728 mm (46 1/4 x 68 in)
Place of origin
Rome
Order this imageCollection
Osterley Park and House, London
NT 267114
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Humphry Morice (1723 - 1785) by Pompeo Girolamo Batoni (Lucca 1708 – Rome 1787), 1761/2. A full-length portrait, lying in the open air in a woodland setting with hunting dogs. Two towers, the Torre Leonina and the Torre dei Venti, in the Vatican gardens are visible in the background. Morice is painted resting after a day’s shooting with his hounds. This portrait is an autograph replica of an original in the collection of Sir James and Lady Graham at Norton Conyers, North Yorkshire. Morice purchased Batoni's Diana and Cupid, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1982.438) on 1 April 1762 and this picture was intended as its pendant. Morice’s pose – the figure reclining in a landscape – is unique in Batoni’s work. The pose in reverse was used in Johann Tischbein’s Goethe in the Roman Campana, 1786-7 (Städel Museum, Frankfurt, inv.no.1157), and may also have inspired Hugh Douglas Hamilton’s portrait of the 4th Earl of Bristol (Ickworth, Suffolk, NT 851985). An oval half-length portrait of Morice is in the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut (1936.43) and may be the original sketch from life.
Provenance
Mrs Benedict Eyre, Hartwell House, Aylesbury; her sale, Sotheby's, 26 April 1968 (133); from which bought by Sir Brinsley Ford and by descent to Augustine Ford. Accepted under the Cultural Gifts Scheme by HM Government from Augustine Ford and allocated to the National Trust for Osterley, 2023.
Makers and roles
Pompeo Girolamo Batoni (Lucca 1708 – Rome 1787), artist
References
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, no, 243, p. 284 Ford 1998 Brinsley Ford, John Ingamells, Francis Russell, John Christian, Nicholas Penny, Jennifer Montagu, Howard Coutts, Timothy Wilson & Dudley Dodd, The Ford Collection – II, Walpole Society, Vol. 60, 1998, pp. 91-376, RBF4 Garnett 2015: Oliver Garnett, At Home with Art Treasures from the Ford Collection at Basildon Park, National Trust, 2015, pp. 14-15