Show me:
and
Clear all filters

  • 33 items
  • 25 items Explore
  • 89 items
  • 3,540 items Explore
  • 97 items Explore
  • 9 items
  • 4 items
  • 220 items
  • 13,459 items Explore
  • 211 items Explore
  • 1,225 items Explore
  • 8,754 items Explore
  • 5,061 items Explore
  • 62 items Explore
  • 165 items Explore
  • 13,005 items Explore
  • 13,621 items Explore
  • 4,805 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 5 items
  • 149 items Explore
  • 2,006 items Explore
  • 4,756 items Explore
  • 438 items Explore
  • 266 items
  • 103 items Explore
  • 19,977 items Explore
  • 34 items Explore
  • 1,911 items Explore
  • 1,083 items Explore
  • 5 items
  • 2,160 items Explore
  • 2 items
  • 455 items Explore
  • 920 items Explore
  • 1 items Explore
  • 5 items
  • 7 items
  • 20,360 items Explore
  • 800 items Explore
  • 19 items
  • 73 items Explore
  • 33 items
  • 793 items
  • 20 items
  • 4 items
  • 26 items
  • 61 items
  • 28 items
  • 319 items Explore
  • 6 items
  • 44 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 2 items
  • 2 items
  • 9 items
  • 121 items Explore
  • 119 items
  • 1 items
  • 926 items Explore
  • 724 items
  • 95 items
  • 27 items
  • 107 items
  • 37,685 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 3,881 items Explore
  • 1,533 items Explore
  • 403 items
  • 125 items Explore
  • 10,430 items Explore
  • 9,684 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 1 items
  • 38 items
  • 3 items
  • 4 items
  • 6,779 items Explore
  • 2 items
  • 7,364 items Explore
  • 4,724 items Explore
  • 1,911 items Explore
  • 1,195 items Explore
  • 23,790 items Explore
  • 3,662 items Explore
  • 17 items
  • 5 items
  • 334 items
  • 1 items
  • 1 items
  • 3,322 items Explore
  • 23 items Explore
  • 374 items Explore
  • 796 items Explore
  • 1,095 items Explore
  • 514 items Explore
  • 1,146 items Explore
  • 89 items
  • 125 items Explore
  • 6,955 items Explore
  • 76 items
  • 108 items
  • 4 items
  • 2 items
  • 63 items
  • 2 items
  • 2,935 items Explore
  • 1,529 items Explore
  • 203 items
  • 90 items
  • 22,241 items Explore
  • 1,333 items Explore
  • 138 items
  • 848 items Explore
  • 32 items
  • 1 items
  • 122 items Explore
  • 40 items
  • 20 items
  • 252 items
  • 313 items
  • 687 items Explore
  • 343 items Explore
  • 2,429 items
  • 2,545 items
  • 3 items
  • 1 items
  • 1 items
  • 4,393 items Explore
  • 40,354 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 3,293 items Explore
  • 275 items Explore
  • 8,799 items Explore
  • 31 items
  • 25 items
  • 304 items Explore
  • 776 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 65 items
  • 161 items
  • 50 items
  • 52 items
  • 23,615 items Explore
  • 916 items
  • 66 items
  • 22,640 items Explore
  • 2 items
  • 2,336 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 1,028 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 759 items
  • 499 items
  • 4 items
  • 3,309 items Explore
  • 179 items
  • 59 items
  • 455 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 21 items
  • 90 items Explore
  • 76 items
  • 281 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 6 items
  • 128 items
  • 295 items
  • 447 items
  • 290 items
  • 1 items
  • 906 items Explore
  • 272 items Explore
  • 448 items
  • 11,295 items Explore
  • 755 items Explore
  • 6,020 items Explore
  • 2 items
  • 8,295 items Explore
  • 27 items
  • 1 items
  • 5,976 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 3,725 items Explore
  • 9,182 items Explore
  • 7,886 items Explore
  • 182 items
  • 19 items
  • 144 items
  • 7 items
  • 853 items Explore
  • 19 items
  • 8 items
  • 1,096 items Explore
  • 270 items
  • 1 items
  • 2,084 items
  • 3,543 items Explore
  • 695 items Explore
  • 18 items
  • 134 items
  • 6,743 items Explore
  • 95 items
  • 18,939 items Explore
  • 3,136 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 7 items
  • 10,979 items Explore
  • 37 items
  • 2 items
  • 21,446 items Explore
  • 35 items
  • 13,291 items Explore
  • 3,462 items Explore
  • 5,642 items Explore
  • 33 items
  • 51,102 items Explore
  • 41 items
  • 646 items Explore
  • 417 items
  • 26,946 items Explore
  • 216 items
  • 3 items
  • 6 items
  • 1 items
  • 35 items
  • 27 items
  • 445 items Explore
  • 636 items
  • 217 items Explore
  • 13 items
  • 13,766 items Explore
  • 1,360 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 10,260 items
  • 9 items
  • 10 items
  • 14 items
  • 25 items
  • 1 items
  • 4,536 items Explore
  • 913 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 1 items
  • 318 items
  • 511 items Explore
  • 42 items
  • 2,291 items Explore
  • 1,664 items Explore
  • 15 items
  • 1,876 items Explore
  • 150 items
  • 81 items
  • 766 items Explore
  • 3,140 items Explore
  • 44 items
  • 17 items
  • 12 items
  • 10,669 items Explore
  • 23,646 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 3 items
  • 1 items
  • 41 items
  • 1,374 items
  • 179 items Explore
  • 8 items
  • 92 items
  • 1 items
  • 13,586 items Explore
  • 3,583 items Explore
  • 2,903 items Explore
  • 4,798 items Explore
  • 22 items
  • 30 items
  • 6,910 items Explore
  • 4,841 items Explore
  • 1 items Explore
  • 2,300 items Explore
  • 2,978 items Explore
  • 2 items
  • 1,898 items Explore
  • 191 items
  • 223 items Explore
  • 466 items Explore
  • 6,118 items Explore
  • 8,729 items Explore
  • 1,860 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 1 items
  • 5,943 items Explore
  • 3,354 items Explore
  • 11,129 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 84 items
  • 11 items
  • 2,520 items Explore
  • 7 items
  • 24 items
  • 51 items
  • 6 items
  • 1 items
  • 4,290 items Explore
  • 611 items Explore
  • 72 items
  • 17 items
  • 154 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 95 items Explore
  • 458 items
  • 996 items Explore
  • 3,556 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 5 items
  • 2 items
  • 9,548 items Explore
  • 48 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 7 items
  • 42 items
  • 3 items
  • 13,807 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 1,162 items Explore
  • 92 items
  • 10,565 items Explore
  • 1,920 items
  • 18 items
  • 6,749 items Explore
  • 21 items
  • 12,949 items Explore
  • 1,418 items Explore
  • 8 items
  • 6,175 items Explore
  • 14,900 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 1,667 items Explore
  • 181 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 15 items
  • 5,686 items Explore
  • 12,284 items Explore
  • 48 items
  • 25 items
  • 2 items
  • 3 items
  • 7,192 items Explore
  • 357 items Explore
  • 13 items
  • 6 items
  • 103 items Explore
  • 7 items
  • 5 items
  • 485 items
  • 667 items Explore
  • 8,368 items Explore
  • 58 items
  • 7,347 items Explore
  • 5 items
  • 26 items
  • 4,615 items Explore
  • 428 items
  • 339 items Explore
  • 12,715 items Explore
  • 55 items
  • 20 items
  • 7 items
  • 4 items
  • 325 items Explore
  • 427 items
  • 458 items
  • 1 items
  • 3,701 items Explore
  • 27 items
  • 1,238 items Explore
  • 2,503 items Explore
  • 756 items Explore
  • 36 items
  • 1,139 items Explore
  • 97 items Explore
  • 24 items
  • 229 items Explore
  • 80,175 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 3,136 items Explore
  • 2,871 items Explore
  • 25 items
  • 5,351 items Explore
  • 1,831 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 17,515 items Explore
  • 4,930 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 7 items
  • 622 items Explore
  • 85 items
  • 31 items
  • 1 items
  • 76 items
  • 29 items
  • 86 items
  • 3 items
  • 1,176 items Explore
  • 109 items
  • 805 items
  • 12,604 items Explore
  • 27 items
  • 13 items
  • 1,709 items Explore
  • 214 items
  • 17,037 items Explore
  • 85 items
  • 17 items
  • 1 items
  • 8 items
  • 324 items
  • 2 items
  • 626 items Explore
  • 1,597 items Explore
  • 8 items
  • 1,130 items Explore
  • 382 items
  • 2 items
  • 343 items

Select a time period

Or choose a specific year

Clear all filters

Commodore the Hon. Augustus Hervey, later Vice-Admiral, and 3rd Earl of Bristol (1724-1779)

Thomas Gainsborough RA (Sudbury 1727 - London 1788)

Category

Art / Oil paintings

Date

1767 - 1768 (exh at Society of Artists)

Materials

Oil on canvas

Measurements

2320 x 1525 mm (91½ x 60 in)

Place of origin

Bath

Order this image

Collection

Ickworth, Suffolk

NT 851720

Caption

Gainsborough is less frequently associated with military or naval portraits than Reynolds, and this picture perhaps enables one to see why. Despite uniform, setting and props, the sitter remains first and foremost the gentleman. When this portrait was painted, Hervey’s active life at sea had in fact ended. As a younger son, he had to make a career, and he had been an assiduous naval officer. His naval and amorous activities are breezily recounted in his diaries for 1746-59. The picture alludes to what the future Lord Bristol must have regarded as the most distinguished action of his career: the taking of Moro Castle, at the entrance to Havana, in 1762. Gainsborough is credited with an octagonal miniature painting (also at Ickworth) of his illegitimate son with Kitty Hunter.

Summary

Oil painting on canvas, Commodore the Hon. Augustus Hervey, later Vice-Admiral, and 3rd Earl of Bristol (1724-1779) by Thomas Gainsborough RA (Sudbury 1727 - London 1788), 1767/68. A full-length portrait of a man turned to the left, gazing to the left, wearing naval uniform, dark blue coat with gold braid, cream waistcoat with gilt buttons, his legs crossed, his left arm with telescope, resting on a rusty anchor draped with the Spanish ensign; cliffs right, the sea, left, with a warship at anchor, and on the horizon the Moro Fort, Havana.

Full description

Gainsborough is less frequently associated with military or naval portraits than Reynolds, and this picture perhaps enables one to see why. Despite uniform, setting, and props, the sitter remains first and foremost the gentleman, as easy on the seashore leaning upon an anchor as he would have been in the Assembly Rooms at Bath - the city in which it was probably painted (Gainsborough's studio was there then, and we know that Hervey, as he then was, was there for his gout in 1767) -with his elbow on a chair. Since he was ashore, this was no doubt to the liking of the sitter, who wrote around then in his Journal, about an earlier period: "I cared very little about anything but my pleasures in these days, till I got to sea, and then my profession was all my pleasure" Not that Lord Bristol was in any sense a salon sailor. As second son of John, Lord Hervey, eldest surviving son of the 1st Earl, he had to make a career, and he was an assiduous naval officer, entering the Navy as "Captain's servant" to his uncle William Hervey, and ending his sea-faring as Captain of the Centurion in 1763. From 1771 to 1775 - when he resigned on succeeding to the title - he was a Lord of the Admiralty, and in 1778 he was promoted Vice-Admiral of the Blue. His naval and amorous activities are breezily recounted in his transcribed diaries for 1746-1759. The present picture, which was exhibited in 1768, is thus retrospective. It alludes to what the future Lord Bristol must have regarded as the most distinguished action of his career: his part in the taking of the Moro Castle, commanding the entrance to the Havannah (Havana), capital of the then Spanish-owned Cuba, in the Seven Years' War, in 1762. This had already been commemorated at the time, in a portrait by Reynolds given to Bury St. Edmunds, for which he was M.P. (Manor House Museum, ibid.). Hervey was given the honour of taking the news back to England, and on the way captured a large French frigate laden with military stores. The ship must be his command, The Dragon, a new one of 74 guns; the Spanish ensign cast down on the anchor commemorates the defeated navy. The 3rd Earl of Bristol's amorous and matrimonial career ran less smoothly than his naval one, which helps to account for the somewhat irregular descent of this picture. In 1744 he entered upon a clandestine marriage with the already notorious Elizabeth Chudleigh, which he collusively allowed her to disavow by a suit of jactitation in 1769, so that she could bigamously marry the Duke of Kingston. In 1751, his flight from an entanglement with the wife of M. (de) Caze prevented his returning to Paris with his naval uniform and a drawing of his ship, as promised, for Gravelot to finish the conversation-piece that he had begun in collaboration with Liotard (also now at Ickworth, completed by an English hand). From about 1763 to 1765 he had a liaison with Kitty Hunter, previously the mistress of the 10th Earl of Pembroke (to whom Hervey gave a portrait of himself by Reynolds in 1763), and later the wife of Field-Marshal Sir Alured Clarke, by whom he had an illegitimate son, Augustus Hervey (c.1765-82), an octagonal miniature of whom by Gainsborough is also at Ickworth. It seems to have been his desire to marry a Miss Moysey, a daughter of Gainsborough's physician at Bath - a liaison that he was subsequently to deny - that led him in 1768, first to attempt to gain a divorce from Elizabeth Chudleigh, and then - when she would not suffer this - to collude with her in denying that the marriage existed. His final liaison, which began around 1771, was with Mary Davis (c.1735-1835), wife of the banker Alexander Nesbitt, the subject of two Reynolds portraits painted for Lord Bristol in 1781 - in the Wallace Collection and (appropriately, as Circe) in the Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Mass., respectively - and apparently of a number of pastels or drawings by Liotard . It was to her that he left an estate of £1,200 p.a. in Yorkshire, and all his personalty, which will have included this portrait. She in turn seems to have kept up close relations with the descendants of Constantine Phipps, 1st Baron Mulgrave, and his wife, Lady Lepell Hervey, the sitter's sister, and to have given or left them a number of pictures of or associated with herself and the Earl of Bristol. Notes: (i) Augustus Hervey's Journals: 1746-1759, ed. David Erskine, 1954, p.294. (ii) See the letter from J-J. Vial in Nice to J-E. Liotard of 14 Dec. 1775, passing on the Earl's invitation to him to come to Nice to complete his portrait, and to paint him with a lady whom he had painted many times before: Renée Loche & Marcel Roethlisberger, L'opera completa di Liotard, 1978, p.100, under no.119. (adapted from author's version/pre-publication, Alastair Laing, In Trust for the Nation, exh. cat., 1995)

Provenance

Commissioned by the sitter, and seen in his house in St. James's Square by Horace Walpole, by whom singled out as: "very good. one of the best modern portraits I have seen. It is at Ld Bristol's in St. James's square".; Mary Davis, Mrs. Nesbitt (d.1825), Norwood Ho., Streatham; Anne Phipps, Lady Murray (d. 1848), by whom inserted, with other pictures, into the sale of Joseph Robins, Christie's, 21-22 February 1834, lot 83 (bought in); again, at Hoard's, 9 May 1835, lot 106; and at Deacon's, 9 May 1838 (bt. Lockyer for 65 gns.); offered by Lockyer to Earl Jermyn (later 2nd Marquess of Bristol), who refused it but referred the offer to his father, the 1st Marquess (1769-1859), the sitter's nephew, who evidently bought it; first recorded as in the possession of the Marquess of Bristol by G.F. Fulcher, Life of Thomas Gainsborough, R.A., 1856, pp.61 & 185; accepted in lieu of death duties by the Treasury in 1956. Loaned to the National Trust in 1956 under the auspices of the National Land Fund, later the National Heritage Memorial Fund, and then transferred to the National Trust in 1983.

Credit line

Ickworth, The Bristol Collection (acquired through the National Land Fund and transferred to The National Trust in 1956)

Makers and roles

Thomas Gainsborough RA (Sudbury 1727 - London 1788), artist

Exhibition history

In Trust for the Nation, National Gallery, London, 1995 - 1996, no.8 The Treasure Houses of Britain, National Gallery of Art, Washington, USA, 1985 - 1986, no.483

References

Fulcher 1856 George Williams Fulcher, Life of Thomas Gainsborough, R.A., London, 1856 , p. 211 Armstrong 1898 Sir Walter Armstrong, Gainsborough and his Place in English Art, London, 1898, pp. 116, 192 Whitley 1915 William T. Whitley, Thomas Gainsborough, London, 1915, p. 59 Whitley 1928 William T. Whitley, Artists and their Friends in England 1700-1799, London, 1928 , II, p.369 Waterhouse 1953 E. K. Waterhouse 1953, "Preliminary Check List of Gainsborough Portraits", Walpole Society, XXXIII, 1953, p. 11 Waterhouse 1958 Ellis K. Waterhouse, Gainsborough, London 1958, No.82, p.56 & pl. 105.

View more details