Reverend Charles Everard Booth DD (c.1726-1792), Captain Griffith Booth, RN, and an Unidentified Man playing Billiards
John Hamilton Mortimer ARA (Eastbourne 1740 – London 1779)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
circa 1775 - 1779
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
997 x 1219 mm (39 1/4 x 48 in)
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Upton House, Warwickshire
NT 446689
Caption
The Reverend Charles Everard, shown seated, was Rector of various churches and Prebendary of York and Sarum. His mother was the daughter of Lawrence Booth of Twemlow, Cheshire, through whom he succeeded to Twemlow and assumed the names and arms of Booth. He married, but died without children. Little is otherwise known about the Reverend, and as such, the scene is not identifiable. The players are seen using the mace, which was superseded by the cue soon after 1800.
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Reverend Charles Everard Booth DD (c.1726-1792), Capain Griffith Booth, RN, and an Unidentified Man playing Billiards by John Hamilton Mortimer ARA (Eastbourne 1740 - London 1779). The interior of a classical room with, left, the Reverend Charles Everard Booth in dark clothes seated, holding a mace in his left hand and resting his right arm on the back of a chair; next to him stands a younger man who leans against the billiard table, his legs crossed, a mace in his left hand, turning towards a man who stands at the right, in shirtsleeves and blue waistcoat.
Provenance
Descended in the Booth family, Twemlow Hall, until 1862, when the house and contents were bought by Colonel Egerton Leigh. A label attached to the back of the picture, signed 'E.L. 1893' records that it was bequeathed to William Charles Booth in 1829 by the widow of Rev. Chas. Everard/Booth, along with a miniature of him by Ozias Humphrey, and 'sold to us with the house and property 1862'. It was acquired from the widow of Egerton Leigh (d. 1924) by Spink & Son, from whom it was bought by Lord Bearsted in Feb. 1929, for £900.A label attached to the back of the picture, signed E.L. 1893, records that it was bequeathed to William Charles Booth in 1829 and sold with the house and property in 1862; given with Upton House to the National Trust by Walter Samuel, 2nd Viscount Bearsted (1882 – 1948) shortly before his death in 1948
Credit line
Upton House, The Bearsted Collection (National Trust)
Marks and inscriptions
E.L. 1893 (label attached to the back of the picture signed)
Makers and roles
John Hamilton Mortimer ARA (Eastbourne 1740 – London 1779), publisher
References
Williamson 1931 G.C. Williamson, English Conversation Pieces, London, 1931, p. 23, Pl. LXVII Collins Baker and James, 1933: C. H. Collins Baker and Montague R. James, British Painting, London 1933, p. 138 Sunderland 1986 John Sunderland, John Hamilton Mortimer: his Life and Works', Walpole Soc., vol. 52, 1986 (1988), cat. 27, pp. 129-30 & fig. 43