Prince Rupert (1619-1682), Colonel William Murray and Colonel, The Hon. John Russell (1620-1681)
William Dobson (bap. London 1611 - London 1646)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
circa 1640
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
1518 x 2083 mm (59 3/4 x 82 in)
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Ashdown House, Oxfordshire
NT 493070
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Prince Rupert (1619-1682), Colonel William Murray and Colonel, The Hon. John Russell (1620-1681) by William Dobson (London 1611 – London 1646). Inscribed with names of sitters, as Prince Rupert, Prince Maurice and the Duke of Richmond. The three figures are grouped round a table; Prince Rupert stands at the left, holding a roll of documents, a dog beside him in front of his scarlet and silver-braided cloak; at his left Colonel Murray, wearing a grey-brown jerkin, looks at Colonel Russell while, as a pledge of success, he dips his cockade in a glass of wine; Colonel Russell is seated at the right in a grey-green, gold embroidered coat, his right hand supporting a flask on the table, his left resting on his hat with grey, pink and black cockade, on a chair beside him; similarly coloured curtains behind.
Full description
Thomas Nashe, in his History and Antiquities of Worcestershire (1781; vol.II, p.224), describes the other version of this picture at Ombersley as follows: “Saloon … Over the sideboard, a most capital picture by Dobson, the best I ever saw of that master: the subject is: Colonel Russel, father of lord Orford, having flung up his commission in disgust, prince Rupert and colonel Murray, over a bottle, persuade him to resume it; Russel has his hand upon a flask, and appears very maudlin; Murray with a sly look, short hair, Scotch complection, and soldier-like face, is dipping a cockade in a glass of Burgundy, intimating that he has drawn him in to accept the commission: Prince Rupert behind half fuddled, with a star on his cloak; this picture is said to have cost lord Orford, 400 l.” However, as Malcolm Rogers points out in his entry on that picture in the 1983 Dobson exhibition catalogue, there does not appear to be any historical basis for such an interpretation of it, whilst such a moment of wavering loyalty would be unlikely to have been permanently preserved in paint. It is anyway the mysterious Col. William Murray (who is not to be confused with William Murray, later Earl of Dysart, but is just known to have been with Prince Rupert at the Siege of Bristol in 1645) who performs the central action of the picture, not the much-portrayed Col. the Hon. John Russell (1620-1681), a younger brother of the 4th Earl of Bedford. All that one can say is that some compact (probably set down in the scroll held by Prince Rupert) is probably being sealed between the three. Oliver Millar dates the version of this painting shown in the Age of Charles I exhibition to c.1644, as “one of the earliest group-portraits painted in England which has the air of a conversation piece”. Malcolm Rogers, associating it with Murray’s known period of service under Prince Rupert, and noting that the dog, which bears the latter’s initials on his collar, is no longer his favourite white poodle, ‘Boy’, which died at the Battle of Marston Moor (2 July 1644), dates it to late 1644 or early 1645, when Rupert was in Oxford.In the 1938 exhibition it was said of the exhibited picture that a contemporary copy (referring to the Ashdown version) was at Hamstead Marshall. On the assumption that the 1938 and 1972 exhibited paintings are one and the same, the designation ‘copy’ is not applicable to 493070. It is certainly not inferior, and is perhaps superior, to the picture shown in 1972. It is apparently unfinished, and is perhaps therefore an autograph replica, which Dobson’s death prevented him from completing. Indeed, comparisons throw up many evident variations from the original: e.g. the central figure was not to have lace collar or cuffs, Prince Rupert is given a hat and a much more prominent Star.
Provenance
?first recorded at Combe Abbey by Horace Walpole (Visits, xxxiii, 2nd September 1768 ff.,p.63): “good picture of Prince Rupert, Prince Maurice, and a Huntsman; then in the 19th century at Hamstead Marshall (the third seat of the Earls of Craven – see below); although then there was yet another version of this picture at Coombe Abbey (1866 cat.no.224), it would not appear to have been the present painting, since the half-educated 1866 cat. (which it is a calumny to ascribe to Sir George Scharf, and appears to be nothing more than a printed version of the Housekeeper’s handlist, with its details just [mis-!] transcribed from the paintings or their frames or labels), describes it as of “Prince Rupert, Colonel Murray, and Colonel John Rupert” and ascribes it to “P. Louise”; Acquired at the auction of the Craven Collection at Sotheby's in 1968. Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to the National Trust for display at Ashdown House, 1968.
Credit line
Ashdown House, The Craven Collection (acquired by HM Treasury and transferred to the National Trust in 1968)
Marks and inscriptions
Inscribed with names of sitters, as Prince Rupert, Prince Maurice and the Duke of Richmond.
Makers and roles
William Dobson (bap. London 1611 - London 1646), artist