Summary

Sculpture, plaster; Portrait bust of Charles Ellis, 1st Baron Seaford of Seaford, MP (1771-1845); Elizabeth Upton, Lady Templetown (1747-1823); London, c. 1798-1800. A portrait of the Jamaican-born plantation owner and enslaver, Charles Rose Ellis, who married in 1798 Elizabeth Catherine Caroline Hervey (1780-1803), the only daughter of John Hervey (1757-96), the elder brother of Frederick William Hervey, 5th Earl and 1st Marquess of Bristol (1769-1859). Frederick became heir to the Bristol titles and estates on the untimely death of his brother. The portrait of Charles Ellis was made by the talented amateur artist Elizabeth Upton, Lady Templetown (1747-1823), who is best-known today for the designs she supplied to Josiah Wedgwood, but was also an impressive sculptor. Several of her sculpted portraits may be seen at Ickworth, including a marble bust of the 5th Earl. He too had married in 1798, so it seems probable that Elizabeth Upton conceived his bust and that of Charles Ellis, which are very similar to each other, around the same time, perhaps as wedding presents.

Full description

A plaster portrait bust of Charles Rose Ellis, 1st Baron Seaford (1771-1845), made by Elizabeth Upton, Lady Templetown. The sitter is depicted looking slightly to his left and dressed in a toga, fastened at the right shoulder with a large boss-like clasp. The bust is truncated at the shoulders and cut fairly square across the chest. Mounted on a circular socle, also in plaster, with a blank inscription plate. This portrait bust, made around 1800, depicts the politician, plantation owner and enslaver Charles Rose Ellis, MP (1771-1845), who in 1826 would be created 1st Baron Seaford of Seaford. Ellis was born in St John, Jamaica, the son of John Ellis and Elizabeth, née Pallmer, both members of prominent plantationer and slave-owning families – his paternal ancestor Colonel John Ellis had settled in Jamaica in 1665 and established the family fortune on the island, whilst other family members over the generations occupied senior positions in the island’s administration. In 1782 both of Charles Ellis’s parents were lost at sea, leaving him orphaned; for some years he was brought up alongside Elizabeth Vassall, later Lady Holland, also from a Jamaican slave-owning family, before in the mid-1780s being sent to school at Eton, where he met the future politician George Canning (1770-1827). The two men, who also both went on to Christ Church, Oxford became lifelong friends, Ellis a dogged and faithful supporter of Canning in Parliament, Canning recommending his friend for a peerage in 1826. Charles Ellis’s father John had been among the top 1% of sugar planters in Jamaica, owning six estates on which worked around 1,200 enslaved people. On his death, John Ellis divided his estate between his two sons, Charles receiving a legacy in the form of estates and enslaved people in Jamaica, which brought him a huge income of around £20,000 a year. He decided to settle in England and became an absentee landlord, who only revisited Jamaica in 1832, after he had read reports in England of the rebellion of the enslaved in western Jamaica, in the course of which his estates at Montpelier and Shettlewood suffered serious damage (Higman 2005, pp. 227-28). Otherwise he was content to leave his estates to be managed by agents, known as attorneys (Higman 2005). Ellis quickly bought his way into Parliament, serving as an M.P. for three successive constituencies, from 1793 until his ennoblement in 1826. During his long Parliamentary career though, there was really only one political issue in which Ellis took a close interest, the future of the West Indies and defending the interests of the planters and slave-owners, whose leader he became in the House, through his chairmanship of the West India committee. Ellis repeatedly voted against abolition. He advocated both to protect the interests of plantation owners and to improve the conditions of enslaved people. Although his propositions were considered in Parliament, they ultimately came to little. Following abolition in the 1830s, Ellis was awarded compensation of £14,022 for ownership of 795 enslaved people on his Jamaican estates and a share of £4,102 for 223 enslaved people on other estates. With abolition, Ellis became a keen promoter of European migration to the West Indies, in 1835 giving land for the creation of the settlement of Seaford in western Jamaica, designed to receive a large group of German immigrants. On 2 August 1798, Charles Ellis married Elizabeth Catherine Caroline Hervey (1780-1803), the only daughter of John Augustus Lord Hervey (1757-96), the eldest son and heir of the 4th Earl of Bristol, the ‘Earl-Bishop’. His introduction to the Herveys may have come through another of his close friends, Robert Banks Jenkinson (1770-1828), later 2nd Earl of Liverpool and Prime Minister, who in 1795 had married Louisa Hervey (1770-1821), the sister of Frederick William Hervey (1768-1859), later 5th Earl and 1st Marquess of Bristol. Charles and Elizabeth Ellis had two sons and a daughter, their elder son Charles succeeding his father as 2nd Baron Seaford and also through his mother becoming the 6th Lord Howard de Walden. Elizabeth however died young of consumption in 1803. After many years as a widower Charles Ellis married in 1840 Anne Louisa Emily Hardy (1788-1877), the widow of Nelson’s captain at the Battle of Trafalgar. Whilst it is not known how far these qualities extended to his relations with the enslaved people on his Jamaican estates, Charles Ellis was widely admired within his political and social circles in Britain, as an attractive character, noted for his generosity, kindness and loyalty. He certainly would have maintained friendly relations with the Hervey family after his wife’s death. There is also at Ickworth a portrait of him by Sir Thomas Lawrence, painted in 1829-30 (NT 851750). The bust has until now been catalogued as by an anonymous British sculptor, but is in fact a characteristic work by Elizabeth Upton, Lady Templetown. The bust section with its toga-like drapery is almost identical to that in Lady Templetown’s marble bust of Frederick William Hervey, later 5th Earl and 1st Marquess of Bristol, also at Ickworth (NT 852209), whilst the conception of the portrait of the youthful male sitter is likewise very similar to her portrait of Frederick William. Charles and Frederick had their marriages in the same year, 1798. It seems likely that the two portraits were worked on at the same time by the sculptor and, perhaps, were conceived as wedding gifts. It may be that like the bust of Frederick William Hervey,a marble version of the bust of Charles Ellis was made and descended within his family, remaining to be identified. Elizabeth Upton was one of a small group of well-born women living in the second half of the eighteenth century who were able to varying degrees to make use of their considerable artistic talents, by pursuing careers as amateur artists. Others included Diana, Lady Beauclerk (1734-1808) and the Honourable Anne Seymour Damer (1748–1828). Like Diana Beauclerk, Elizabeth Upton is best known today for the designs she made from 1783 for Josiah Wedgwood and delivered in the form of cut-outs, which were then modelled up in the factory and reproduced on Wedgwood wares (Hughes 1952). Born into a gentry family in Herefordshire, in 1769 Elizabeth Boughton married Clotworthy Upton (1721-85), a courtier who in 1776 was created Baron Templetown of Templetown, Co. Antrim. Some of the couple’s wealth may have derived from slavery; Lord Templetown owned estates and enslaved people on Grenada which, on his death in 1785, he bequeathed in trust for his wife for life. However, Elizabeth does not seem to have been very well-off in later life. A miniature portrait of Lady Templetown by Anne Mee (c.1760-1851) at Ickworth, painted c. 1795-1800 (NT 851902), shows her as a younger woman. Another portrait by John Downman (1750-1824), painted c. 1790, is known from versions in the Victoria & Albert Museum (Wedgwood collection, Inv. WE.7906-2014) and at Ickworth (NT 851999). The only sculptures by Elizabeth Boughton currently identified are the significant group at Ickworth, but sculpting seems to have been an important artistic activity for her from early. In 1773 she travelled to Italy with her husband, remaining until 1775. The sculptor Richard Hayward recorded the couple as being in Rome in 1774, Hayward noting that ‘Mrs Upton models in Clay and wax’ (Stainton 1983, p. 15). The Uptons must have come to know Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-78), who dedicated to Mrs Upton a plate in his famous book of engravings of Roman antiquities published in 1778, 'Vasi, candelabri, cippi, sarcofagi, tripodi, lucerne ed ornamenti antichi', writing fulsomely ‘To Mrs Eliza Upton, English Lady and most learned in every conceivable field of the liberal arts’: (‘Alla Signora Eliza Upton Dama Inglese Intendentissima in ogni sorta di Arti LIberali’). By now Lady Templetown, Elizabeth returned to Italy as a widow late in 1792, accompanied by her three daughters, spending the next three years in the country (Ingamells 1997, pp. 932-33). She was in Rome in December 1792 where she was said to have much admired works by John Flaxman, and by March 1793 was in Naples, where she would stay for two years, an active member of the resident British community. In early May 1795 the family left for Venice and by June were in Vienna where they were joined by Lady Templetown’s eldest son John. The family presumably returned to Britain from Vienna. As well as the busts of Charles Ellis and Frederick William Hervey, there is also at Ickworth a group of portrait busts in plaster of two of Lady Templetown’s grandchildren, the two eldest children of Frederick Hervey and Elizabeth Albana Upton, Lady Augusta Hervey (NT 852216) and Frederick William Hervey, later 2nd Marquess of Bristol (NT 852217.1 and 852217.2). Already in 1794 Lady Templetown was seeking remedies for her failing eyesight, so it may be that she was physically unable to practise her art in the latter decades of her life. The designs that she made for Wedgwood were in cut paper and it seems quite likely that her eyesight prevented her from working with scissors. The remarkable group of portrait sculptures at Ickworth may well have been among the last works of art that she made. Lady Templetown died at the end of September 1823 in London, ‘At her house in Portland-place, after a long illness’ (The Times, 1 October 1823, p. 3). Jeremy Warren July 2025