Urban Hanlon Broughton (1857-1929)
Sir Oswald Hornby Joseph Birley (Auckland 1880 – 1952)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1931 (signed and dated)
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
997 x 756 mm (39¼ x 29 ¾ in)
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire
NT 515468
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Urban Hanlon Broughton (1857-1929) by Sir Oswald Hornby Joseph Birley, RA (Auckland 1880 – 1952), signed bottom left: Oswald Birley 1931. A half-length posthumous portrait of the father of Huttleston Rogers Broughton. Lord Fairhaven, turned three-quarters to the right, gazing at spectator, arms folded, wearing a black coat and waistcoat, a white shirt with a high collar and a black cravat with a pin, white cuffs show on left sleeve, white handkerchief showing from top pocket, receding hair, brushed back, moustache, sombre appearance. The sitter died in 1929 before his elevation to the peerage. This title passed to his son and his widow was allowed to bear the title which she would have received had he lived. In 1887 went to the USA due to his involvement with the Shone Sewer System where Henry Huttleston Rogers (1840-1909), a millionaire industrialist, wished to provide a sewer and water project for his hometown of Fairhaven, Massachussets. He became acquainted with Henry Huttleston Roger’s daughter, Clara Leland Duff, the widow of Bradford Ferris Duff (d.1891) and in 1895 when the work was almost completed they were married in New York. In 1928 he bought the neo-Gothic mansion at Ashridge in Hertfordshire and the surrounding 235 acres of woodland and gave the estate to the Conservative Party. In 1929 he also bought the site at Runnymede in Surrey, where King John had signed the Magna Carta, because it was threatened by development but shortly after he died. In December 1929 it was presented to the National Trust by Lady Fairhaven and her two sons in memory of husband; they also commissioned the architect Edwin Lutyens to design memorial lodges on the site.
Provenance
Bequeathed to the National Trust by Huttleston Rogers Broughton, 1st Lord Fairhaven (1896-1966) with the house and the rest of the contents.
Credit line
Anglesey Abbey, The Fairhaven Collection (National Trust)
Makers and roles
Sir Oswald Hornby Joseph Birley (Auckland 1880 – 1952), artist