Harry Grey, 3rd Earl of Stamford (1685-1739)
Jonathan Richardson the elder (London 1665 – London 1745)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1705 - 1738
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
(49 x 39 in) 1245 x 990 mm
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Dunham Massey, Cheshire
NT 932365
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Harry Grey, 3rd Earl of Stamford (1685-1739) by Jonathan Richardson the elder (London 1665 – London 1745), inscribed (erroneously) bottom right: Tho: Earl of Stamford / Son of Tho: Ld. Grey / ob: 1720. Three-quarter-length portrait, of a man, turned slightly the right, gazing at the spectator, standing, in red and ermine peer’s robes, with sword, his left arm leaning on a plinth, his right hand on his hip. Long curled dark brown wig. Pillar in the background on the right.
Provenance
Not included in any of the inventories, nor in the 1928 or 1931 sales from Enville Hall: was it (like that of the sitter’s wife – which was sold with a false pendant – in that of 1946, or had it always remained – against the odds – at Dunham Massey? The inscription on it is not typical of those there, but is in the same form as that on Reynolds’s portrait of the 5th Earl (P.97), which is likewise unrecorded in any Dunham Massey catalogue of pictures, or in either sale of Foley-Grey pictures from Enville Hall, and which is misidentified not by one, but by two generations so perhaps it was acquired from elsewhere – probably from a family into which a Stamford daughter had married – by the 10th Earl. Or, it had always been in the Grey, Earls of Stamford House, Enville Hall. Bequeathed to the National Trust with the house, estate and all the contents of Dunham Massey by Roger Grey, 10th Earl of Stamford (1896 - 1976)
Marks and inscriptions
(labelled)
Makers and roles
Jonathan Richardson the elder (London 1665 – London 1745), publisher