William Beckford, MP (1760 - 1844), aged 21
George Romney (Dalton-in-Furness 1734 – Kendal 1802)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1781 - 1782
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
2362 x 1448 mm (93 x 57 in)
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Upton House, Warwickshire
NT 446699
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, William Beckford, MP (1760-1844) by George Romney (1734-1802), 1781-82. A full-length portrait of a young man, standing looking to the right, leaning with his right arm on a sculpted pedestal. He wears a plum-coloured coat with white waistcoat and stock, buff-coloured breeches and white hose; behind to the left a building with acanthus pattern frieze and, right, a solitary stag among trees.
Full description
William Thomas Beckford (1760–1844) stands confidently in this commanding portrait, completed by George Romney (1734–1802) over the course of 1781-2. It was painted around the time of Beckford’s 21st birthday which he celebrated with several days of lavish entertaining. Both portrait and festivities marked his entry into adulthood and tremendous wealth. Romney depicts an elegant young man, at ease with his wealth and position. Upon reaching his majority Beckford gained control of his inheritance, which included the Jamaican plantations left by his father, who died when Beckford was nine. The family were substantial landholders and the largest owner of enslaved people on Jamaica where they held considerable political influence, providing mortgages and legal expertise to other plantation owners (i). In 1754, the Beckfords owned 22,000 acres of land, far surpassing any other landowner on the island. By the decade of Beckford’s birth, their plantations provided an average annual income of £14,000 (ii). As an absentee planter exporting sugar, rum and molasses, Beckford was one of the wealthiest men in Britain. His immense fortune was derived from the forced labour of hundreds, if not thousands, of enslaved people bought and sold as the property of the Beckford family (iii). This staggering wealth, amassed over four generations, enabled the Beckfords to gain social and political influence in England. Profits from the West Indies funded Beckford’s patronage of the arts and the construction of his ill-fated house, Fonthill Abbey, as well as the acquisition of furniture, ceramics and objets de vertu to adorn its rooms (iv). It also enabled Beckford to travel widely and to write. At the time of this portrait, Beckford was already writing Vathek, the novel that ensured him public recognition. Vathek explored themes of consumption, luxury and excess, facets of affluent 18th-century culture enabled by the colonial economy and often associated with Beckford (v). It is Beckford’s cultural persona that is cultivated in this poetic portrait. Although the specific meaning of iconographical features such as the deer and teasel have yet to be deciphered, the overall tone is wistful. Beckford appears relaxed in a wooded landscape, gazing ahead while the sun sits low in the sky behind him. He leans informally against a plinth before a classical building, possibly a mausoleum or temple. The subject of the oval relief on the plinth has not been identified. It has been speculated that it shows a literary or Biblical scene, perhaps referring to Vathek or depicting King Lear or Job (vi). The choice of Romney aligned with Beckford’s ambition to consolidate his family’s social status. By the early 1780s, Romney was well-established as a fashionable portrait painter amongst Britain’s aristocratic families. Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792), Romney’s most notable artistic rival, also made Beckford’s portrait the following year (National Portrait Gallery). Significantly, Romney counted Edward Thurlow, Lord Chancellor (1731–1806), among his patrons. Thurlow was an important contact for the artist, securing him further work and potentially this portrait: Beckford was Thurlow’s ward until he reached his majority (vii). Alternatively, it may have been Beckford’s mother, Maria Hamilton (c.1724–1798), who appointed Romney with a view to unveiling the finished work at her son’s extensive birthday celebrations (viii). Another possibility is that the commission was made directly by Beckford, who would later engage the artist to portray his daughters (Huntington Library). The latter was hung together with other family portraits and estate pictures at Fonthill to create a ‘conscious display of lineage, not just of blood but also of the estate’ in an attempt to ‘use his interiors, and the display of the collection within them, to illustrate his ancestry and establish his place in society and history’ (ix). Beckford’s coming-of-age statement was soon followed by a second commission, made by Beckford through his agent. This smaller portrait (The Nemours Foundation) shows the young William Courtenay (1768–1835), with whom Beckford was infatuated. Eight years Beckford’s junior, Courtenay was thirteen when sittings commenced in 1781 and fifteen when the painting was completed in the same year that Beckford married Lady Margaret Gordon. The two portraits may have been a pair, designed to face one another. Both feature the unusual and unexplained motif of a teasel in the foreground. It is possible that they were originally the same size or that Courtenay’s portrait was intentionally smaller, to amplify the impression of Beckford looking down on him (x). Relations between Beckford and Courtenay were private until 1784, when the press publicised details. Beckford fled to Switzerland, accompanied by Margaret, to avoid prosecution under sodomy legislation. Although such proceedings never materialised, prejudice towards homosexuality and ensuing public disapproval had a lasting impact on Beckford’s reputation (xi). The portrait of Beckford remained in family ownership until 1919, when it was sold at auction to Marcus Samuel, 1st Viscount Bearsted (1853–1927) for his home, The Mote. The portrait was erroneously described as William Beckford Senior. Both Beckford Senior and Bearsted held office as Lord Mayor of London, perhaps explaining the latter’s interest in the picture. Romney’s work had returned to prominence with the interest in Georgian portraiture, fashionable between c.1875 and 1914 and shared by Bearsted, who held a collection of 18th-century British paintings (xii). Inherited by his son, Walter Samuel, 2nd Viscount Bearsted (1882–1948), the portrait was hung in the newly created double height picture room of his refurbished country home and private gallery, Upton House. (i) Amy Frost, The Beckford Era, in Caroline Dakers, ed, Fonthill Recovered: A Cultural History (2018) p.60; (ii) Perry Gauci, William Beckford: The First Prime Minister of the London Empire (2013), pp.147-153 (iii) ibid. p.151 (iv) Bath Preservation Trust, Beckford and the Slave Trade: The Legacy of the Beckford Family and Slavery (2007), p.6 (v) Samuel Rowe, Beckford’s Insatiable Caliph: Oriental Despotism and Consumer Society, Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 52, no. 2 (2019), p.185 (vi) Alistair Laing, In Trust for the Nation, unpublished author’s version (1995), unpag. (vii) Alex Kidson, George Romney: A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings (2015), p.65 (viii) Laing (1995), unpag. (ix) Frost (2018), p.79 (x) Kidson (2015), p.151 (xi) Frost (2018), p.77 (xii) Alex Kidson, George Romney, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online (2004)
Provenance
By descent from the sitter's younger daughter, Susannah, wife of Alexander, 10th Duke of Hamilton (1767 - 1852), until sold at Christie's, 7th November 1919, lot 55, as Alderman Beckford by Romney; bought by [?Charles] Davis, on behalf of Marcus Samuel, 1st Viscount Bearsted (1853 - 1927); given with Upton House to the National Trust by Walter Samuel, 2nd Viscount Bearsted (1882 – 1948), in 1948, shortly before his death
Makers and roles
George Romney (Dalton-in-Furness 1734 – Kendal 1802), artist
Exhibition history
In Trust for the Nation, National Gallery, London, 1995 - 1996 The Bearsted Collection, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 1955, no.13
References
Ward and Roberts 1904 H. Ward and W. Roberts, Romeny, 2 vols, 1904, ii, p. 9 Melville 1910 Lewis Melville, The Life and Letters of William Beckford of Fonthill, 1910, p. 294, pl. opp. p. 174 Tippping 1919: H. Avray Tipping, 'The Hamilton Palace Collection of Pictures - II, Country Life, 25 October 1919, pp. 514-17, fig. 2 Upton 1950, The 2nd Viscount Beartsed, Catalogue of Pictures and Porcelain at Upton House, Banbury [National Trust] 1964, p. 19, no. 68 Chapman 1930 Guy Chapman, A Bibliography of William Beckford of Fonthill, London, 1930, pp.116-17; Gore 1964: F. St John Gore, Upton House, The Bearsted Collection: Pictures National Trust, 1964, pp.25-6, pl. Ia Kidson 2015 Alex Kidson, George Romney: A Complete Catalogue of his Paintings, Yale, 2015, vol.I, pp.60-1 Solkin 2015 David H. Solkin, Art in Britain 1660 - 1815, Pelican History of Art, Yale University Press, 2015, p. 232, fig.235
