Lord John Hervey, 2nd Baron Hervey of Ickworth, PC, MP (1696-1743) as a Child
Joseph Brook (d.1725)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1701
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
292 x 241 mm (11½ x 9½ in)
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Ickworth, Suffolk
NT 851857
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Lord John Hervey, 2nd Baron Hervey of Ickworth, PC, MP (1696-1743), as a Child by Joseph Brook (fl.1690 - d.1725), inscribed,with the name of sitter, in big letters, upper right: Mr. Iohn Hervey. A head-and-shoulders portrait of young child. He has fair, short curly hair, dark eyes and pink cheeks. He wears a white dress with left shoulder bare, and a blue stole draped over his right shoulder and flowing out to right. Dark background.
Provenance
On 4 October 1701, John Hervey (later 1st Earl of Bristol) paid “Brook ye Bury painter for ye 7 children’s pictures” £5.7.6d [see Diary of John Hervey, 1894, section XI, p.160 & Appendix 15: List of Hervey Portraits - mentioned in First Lord Bristol’s Book of Expenses: ‘Lord Bristol’s children’, p.250, no.34). But, as S. H. A. Hervey says when summarising this: “It is not clear whether this is a group, or seven different pictures.” 15/6d each would seem extraordinarily little for separate paintings, but then this and its fellow are very small, whilst a single picture would probably have consisted of whole-length figures, requiring as much if not more work, nor does any such picture survive. One might also wonder whether this and NT 851858 do not show children a little older than the five and four years old that John and his sister Elizabeth would have been in 1701 – but that could be ascribed to a lack of competence on the part of the – only local – artist. All in all, to use Occam’s razor, and avoid multiplying entities, it seems safest to assume that theses are two of the pictures paid for in 1701]; thence by descent; on the death of the 4th Marquess (1863-1951), accepted in lieu of tax by HM Treasury, and transferred to the National Trust in 1956
Credit line
Ickworth, The Bristol Collection (acquired through the National Land Fund and transferred to The National Trust in 1956)
Makers and roles
Joseph Brook (d.1725), artist
References
Farrer 1908 Edmund Farrer, Portraits in Suffolk Houses (West), 1908, p.216