Robert Stewart, 2nd Viscount Castlereagh and 2nd Marquess of Londonderry, KG, GCH, MP (1769–1822)
after Sir Francis Legatt Chantrey RA (Norton, nr. Sheffield 1781 – London 1841)
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
circa 1820 - circa 1829
Materials
Plaster
Measurements
765 x 530 x 255 mm
Order this imageCollection
Ickworth, Suffolk
NT 852242
Summary
Sculpture, white plaster on moulded socle, Robert Stewart, 2nd Viscount Castlereagh and 2nd Marquess of Londonderry, KG, GCH, MP (1769–1822) after Sir Francis Legatt Chantrey RA (Norton, nr. Sheffield 1781 – London 1841), 1820s (?). Plaster portrait bust of Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, later 2nd Marquess of Londonderry, turned to the left, wearing classical drapery with the left shoulder bared, eyes left blank. The original marble was commissioned by Castlereagh from Chantrey for 150 guineas in 1820. Signed and dated 1821, it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in the same year, descended in the family until auctioned off in the Londonderry House sale on 16 November 1962, and is now in the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven (Alison Yarrington, et. al, ‘An Edition of the Ledger of Sir Francis Chantrey, R.A., at the Royal Academy, 1809-1841’, The Fifty-Sixth Volume of The Walpole Society, 1994, no.125b, pp.145-46). The original plaster is in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and drawings for it in the National Portrait Gallery. In 1822 the Duke of Wellington ordered another marble, to be sent to the Earl of Aberdeen. This did not happen until 1828, so it is probably the signed and dated version of 1827, at Haddo House, Aberdeenshire (Yarrington, op.cit, no.149b, pp.174 & 145). Another version, signed and dated 1828, was probably made for another member or property of the Londonderry family, since it too was in the Londonderry House sale in 1962 (bought by the late Ian Grant; Yarrington, op.cit., p.145). George IV ordered another (Windsor Castle, signed but not dated; Yarrington, no.207a, pp.232 & 145), and the Duke of Wellington ordered a second one in 1838, to be sent to Sir Robert Peel (whereabouts unknown; Yarrington, no.208b, p.233). Copies in marble, some probably executed by the studio, one in the National Portrait Gallery; Apsley House; the Travellers Club; Powis Castle; and at Wynyard Park (ex-Londonderry).
Provenance
Presumably by gift from the sitter to his political colleague, the 1st Marquess of Bristol (1769-1859), and thence by inheritance and descent until the death of Frederick, 4th Marquess of Bristol (1863-1951); purchased, with the help of funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund, at the sale of the contents of the East Wing of Ickworth, Sotheby's, 11-12 June 1996, lot 99, in which it was catalogued as a bust of Robert Banks, 2nd Earl of Liverpool.
Makers and roles
after Sir Francis Legatt Chantrey RA (Norton, nr. Sheffield 1781 – London 1841), sculptor