Part 25
She stands here--proud, elegant, disdainful, stylish, aristocratic, beautiful, and altogether charming, in her dashing, large, black hat worn at a _debonnaire_ angle, white dress, and light petticoat and light blue sash, looking at us with the most marvellous eyes ever put upon canvas and a mouth that matches them in such naturalness that we expect the Duchess to smile at any moment. Her eyes have such fire and sparkle that they pierce right through us. It is hard to believe that we are looking upon a painted portrait--it must be the Duchess herself who gives us that alert, penetrating, fiery, and mocking glance.
This picture has had a most romantic history. It is the famous “Lost Duchess,” stolen in London, and found after twenty-five years in America.
The Duchess, in some unknown way, fell into the hands of a Mrs. Maginnis, an old schoolmistress, who had it cut down to fit the space over the chimney-piece in her sitting-room and burned up the cut-off piece. Mr. Bentley, a dealer bought the picture from Mrs. Maginnis for £56 and then sold it to Mr. Wynn Ellis, a wealthy City merchant, who sent this _Portrait of a Lady_ to be engraved by Messrs. Henry Graves & Co. This firm, having already engraved the Clifden Duchess of Devonshire, at once identified the subject. When the Wynn Ellis Sale took place at Christie’s, June 6, 1876, this portrait created a great deal of excitement. It was catalogued as follows:
“T. Gainsborough, R. A. _The Duchess of Devonshire_, in a white dress and blue silk petticoat and sash, large black hat and feathers, 59½ × 45 inches.”
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Herbert L. Satterlee_
GEORGIANA, DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE
--_Thomas Gainsborough_]
As this portrait of the Duchess was the first “star” that ever rose in an auction-sale, it is worth while putting forward here the contemporary account of an event which has passed into history. The _London Times_ records:
“The sale of the modern pictures belonging to the Wynn Ellis Collection on Saturday last created such a sensation as has never been experienced in the picture world of London. Throughout the week the pictures had attracted a considerable number of visitors, but on the day preceding the sale the interest came to a climax and crowds filled the rooms of Messrs. Christie, Manson, & Woods. Anyone passing the neighborhood of St. James’s Square might well have supposed that some great lady was holding a reception and this, in fact, was pretty much what was going on within the Gallery in King Street. All the world had come to see a beautiful Duchess, created by Gainsborough; and so far as we could observe, they all came, saw, and were conquered by her fascinating beauty.
“When the portrait was placed before the crowded audience a burst of applause showed the universal admiration of the picture. The biddings commenced at one of 1000 guineas, which was immediately met with one of 3000 guineas from Mr. Agnew; and, amid a silence of quite breathless attention, the bids followed in quick succession until 10,000 guineas was announced. Mr. Agnew then called 10,100 guineas and won the battle in this most extraordinary contest. The audience densely packed on raised seats round and on the floor of the house, stamped, clapped, and bravoed.”
And now comes the story!
Twenty days after this sale, on the night of May 26, 1876, the galleries of Messrs. Agnew were entered, the canvas was cut from the stretching frame, and the Duchess was carried off!
Where?
By whom?
The picture was already too well-known to be saleable and to make it still better known photographs of the picture were immediately placed in every shop-window in London. The subject became of universal interest: pictures of the Duchess were printed on every article of merchandise possible; and fashion decreed that once again the Duchess’s huge hat should be the proper thing to wear. For many years afterwards the “Gainsborough Hat” and the “Picture Hat” continued to be worn in country towns across the Atlantic, far away from London, by persons who had never heard of the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire.
Sensation No. 2.
In March, 1901, the newspapers all over the world announced that the “Lost Duchess” had been found!
Mr. Morland Agnew, after various negotiations, was handed a parcel in the Auditorium Hotel in Chicago which proved to be the Gainsborough canvas. The discovery had been made by the New York Pinkerton Detective Agency, who found the thief, one Adam Worth alias Henry Richmond, son of a German Jew, who had settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and who was one of the most famous and clever criminals ever known.
A few days after its return the picture was purchased by Mr. J. P. Morgan at a price beyond £30,000.
Many years before, in 1762–3, Gainsborough had painted in his studio at Bath the Duchess of Devonshire when she was little Georgiana Spencer, aged six, in a white dress, pink ribbons, and dainty cap. At the same period Gainsborough painted portraits of her parents, Earl and Countess Spencer of Althorp, the one of the Countess ranking very high among Gainsborough’s works of the Bath period. The Countess, Margaret Georgiana, daughter of the Hon. Stephen Poyntz, was a very beautiful and extremely wealthy woman and the Earl also possessed enormous wealth and became famed for the magnificent Collection he made at Althorp. The marriage of this couple in 1755 created a sensation and was much talked of in the gossipy letters and memoirs of the day. One eye-witness related: “The bride followed in a new sedan-chair lined with white satin, a black page walking before and three footmen behind, all in the most superb liveries. The diamonds worn by the newly married pair were given to Mr. Spencer by Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, and were worth £100,000. The shoe-buckles of the bridegroom alone were worth £30,000.”
Lady Harvey related that the wedding-party went from London to Althorp “in three coaches with six horses and two hundred horsemen. The villages through which they passed were in great alarm, some of the people shutting themselves up in their houses, and others coming out with pitchforks, spits, and spades, crying out ‘The invasion has come’, believing that the Pretender and the King of France were both come together; and great relief was experienced when the formidable cavalcade had passed without setting fire to the habitation, or murdering the inhabitants.”
The year after this marriage Mrs. Delany, Horace Walpole’s friend, met “Mrs. Spencer, one of the finest figures I ever saw, in white and silver with all her jewels and scarlet decorations; her modest, unaffected air gives a lustre to all her finery that would be very tinsel without it.”
Is it any wonder that with such parentage Georgiana Spencer should have had brains, beauty, charm, and perfect equipment in every way for that world of society which was her inheritance?
Georgiana was born on June 9, 1757, and was married at the age of seventeen to the fifth Duke of Devonshire, regarded as the “first match” in England. “Georgiana was a lively girl,” said Walpole, “natural and full of grace.” Immediately the Duchess became “the irresistible queen of ton” and the most conspicuous leader of society whenever and wherever she appeared. She dazzled every gathering by her beauty; astonished everyone with her elegant and extravagant dress; and charmed everybody by her wit and her grace. The Duchess was always among the gay butterflies who masqueraded at the Pantheon, promenaded at Ranelagh, danced at assemblies, or played for high-stakes at fashionable gaming-tables. To think of London society in the late Eighteenth Century without the Duchess of Devonshire, is impossible.
Walpole writes that she “effaces all without being a beauty; but her youthful figure, flowing good nature, sense, and lively modesty and modest familiarity make her a phenomenon.”
The Duchess had a clever mind and she delighted in the society of persons of talent. Fox, Sheridan, and Selwyn were among her special friends. The story of her campaigning for Fox with Fox’s sister, Lady Duncannon, and even selling “a kiss for a vote” is told by many pens and by pencils as well, for the Duchess afforded fine material for the caricaturists. The Duchess was much pleased, it is said, by the compliment paid to her during the Fox campaign by an Irishman, who exclaimed: “Sure I could light me pipe at her eyes!” And Gainsborough managed to fix this flaming glance in the famous Satterlee portrait.
Coarse satire attacked the Duchess of Devonshire as it attacks all who enter the political arena; but, on the other hand, there are many tributes from contemporary pens to her sweetness of disposition and to her noble and generous qualities of heart.
In 1806 upon hearing of her death at Devonshire House, Piccadilly, (just lately demolished), the Prince of Wales exclaimed: “We have lost the best-loved woman in England” and Charles James Fox replied: “We have lost the kindest heart in England.”
The Duchess of Devonshire occasionally wrote verse. Her _Passage of the Mountain of St. Gothard_, dedicated to her children (she had a son and two daughters), was published with a French translation in 1802; an Italian translation was printed in 1803; and a German translation in 1805. This poem gave occasion to Coleridge’s ode with the lines:
“O lady nursed in pomp and pleasure Whence learned you that heroic measure?”
Gainsborough could not have made this or any other portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire until after 1782, because, in that year, Bate published in the _Morning Herald_, the following lines:
“O Gainsboro! thou whose genius soars so high, Wild as an eagle in an unknown sky, To Devon turn!--thy pencil there shall find A subject equal to thy happy mind! Amidst thy fairest scenes, thy brightest dyes, Like young Aurora let the Beauty rise.”
Another portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire by Gainsborough is also in this country, owned by the Hon. Andrew W. Mellon. It represents a whole length life-size figure leaning against a pedestal and came from the Collection of the late Earl Spencer at Althorp, Nottinghamshire.
THE BLUE BOY.
_Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788)._
_Collection of the late Mr. Henry E. Huntington._
The _Blue Boy_ is without doubt the most famous picture in the world. When it passed from the Duke of Westminster’s Collection in Grosvenor House, London, by private sale to the late Mr. Henry E. Huntington, the event created a sensation in the art-world, which soon extended to the general public. No painting was ever exploited so widely in the press and when exhibited at the Duveen Galleries in New York, before starting on its journey to California, the _Blue Boy_ attracted unusual crowds.
Before it bade farewell to London the famous picture was exhibited at the National Gallery and the following extract from a letter of Sir Charles J. Holmes, Director of the National Gallery, dated January 24, 1922, to Sir Joseph Duveen, gives an idea of how the portrait is regarded in England:
“My dear Duveen: I saw the last, for the time being anyhow, of the _Blue Boy_ this afternoon at ten minutes past four and feel bound to write these lines to thank you and Mrs. Huntington for the pleasure which the sight of it has given to more than 90,000 people during the last three weeks. It is indeed a most brilliant thing, outshining in its present condition all our English pictures at Trafalgar Square and when the natural mellowing of the varnish during the next two or three years has taken place its perfections will be enhanced. And though its passing from us has been the cause of universal regret, that regret has not been tinged with bitterness. It is generally recognized that while in the process of recovering from the War, the Nation could not have paid the price which its fortunate owner was able to afford.”
[Illustration:
_Collection of the late Mr. Henry E. Huntington_
THE BLUE BOY
--_Thomas Gainsborough_]
The picture, an oil painting on canvas, is large (5 feet, 10 inches × 4 feet) and represents a young boy, Master Jonathan Buttall of London, life-size, dressed in a blue suit, holding a broad-rimmed hat in his right hand and very conspicuously standing forth from a landscape background with a dark, cloudy sky.
The following notes from the _Farington Diary_, recently published, bring us into relation with the two early sales.
Under date of Dec. 15, 1796, we find:
“Buttall’s sale. I went to Gainsborough’s picture of a _Boy in a Blue Vandyke Dress_ sold for 35 guineas. Several of his drawings were sold in pairs. Some went so high as 8 guineas and a half the pair.”
“May 25, 1802. I painted till four o’clock and then went to Nesbitt’s sale in Grafton Street, where I met Hoppner, who had purchased the _Boy in Blue Dress_ by Gainsborough, which was Buttal’s, for 65 guineas. At Buttalls sale it was sold for 35 to Mr. Nesbitt.”
The picture is in marvellous condition. When Lord Ronald Sutherland-Gower saw it in the Duke of Westminster’s Collection before it came to America, he exclaimed:
“The _Blue Boy_ at Grosvenor House has all the glamor and charm of a portrait of a fairy prince.”
These few words explain the spell that the picture seems to cast upon every one who sees it, for whenever _The Blue Boy_ has been exhibited crowds have stood enraptured before it.
Regarding Mr. Nesbitt’s connection with the picture we have the following story from the Rev. J. T. Trimmer, Vicar of Marston-on-Dove, Derbyshire:
“Many years ago there resided at Heston a Mr. Nesbitt, a person of substance and a companion of George, Prince of Wales. He once possessed Gainsborough’s _Blue Boy_ and in the following way. He was dining with the Prince. ‘Nesbitt,’ said the Prince, ‘that picture, (pointing to the _Blue Boy_) shall be yours.’ At first he thought the Prince must be joking, but, finding he was decidedly serious, Nesbitt, who was a _beau_ of the first water, made all suitable acknowledgments for H. R. H.’s generosity and next morning the _Blue Boy_ arrived, followed in due time by a bill for £300, which he had the satisfaction of paying. I heard Mr. Nesbitt many years ago tell the story at my father’s table.”
From Mr. Nesbitt the _Blue Boy_ came into possession of John Hoppner, the artist, who sold it to Earl Grosvenor. Then, of course, _The Blue Boy_ passed as an heirloom to his successor, the Duke of Westminster. For many years _The Blue Boy_ hung in Grosvenor House, London, in the same room with Sir Joshua Reynolds’s _Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse_, the two most famous portraits of the two most famous English painters. And it is one of the romances of art that these two portraits should have crossed the Atlantic and to be again united, as it were, this time in a California mansion.
Gainsborough had doubtless some reason for painting this portrait; but it is not the reason usually given,--namely that it was done in refutation of a theory expressed by Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1778. Apart from the reasons now accepted to disprove this theory, the picture is too joyously painted for a controversial and academic _tour de force_.
One of Gainsborough’s latest biographers, Mr. William T. Whitley,[33] discovered the following in a number of _The European Magazine_ (August 1798), which would seem to give the real reason for the genesis of Gainsborough’s famous portrait:
_Mr. Gainsborough_
“One of the finest pictures this great artist ever painted, and which might be put upon a par with any portrait that ever was executed, is that of a boy in a blue Vandyke dress, which is now in the possession of a tradesman in Greek Street. Gainsborough had seen a portrait of a boy by Titian for the first time, and, having found a model that pleased him, he set to work with all the enthusiasm of his genius. ‘I am proud,’ he said, ‘of being of the same profession with Titian, and was resolved to attempt something like him.’”
So much has been written about this portrait and the copies that have been made of it that great confusion has resulted, and the constant repetition of the same story by writers has tended to obscure rather than to clarify the subject. However, the theory now accepted is that the portrait of _The Blue Boy_ first appeared in public at the Royal Academy in 1770, sent there by Gainsborough himself,--a theory supported by a letter written by Mary Moser, R. A. to Fuseli, then in Rome, in which she said: “It is only telling you what you know already of the Exhibition of 1770, to say that Gainsborough is beyond himself in a Vandyke habit.” Another argument in favor of this date is found in a conversation with an old artist, John Taylor, recorded by J. T. Smith in his _Book for a Rainy Day_.
The person, chiefly, if not wholly, responsible for the first suggestion of the theory that Gainsborough painted the picture to disprove Sir Joshua Reynolds’s pronouncement regarding color seems to have been John Burnet, the engraver of some of Wilkie’s pictures and a writer on art. The legend began to be circulated in 1817, when Burnet published his _Practical Treatise on Painting_, where, after challenging the rules laid down by Sir Joshua, he says: “I believe Gainsborough painted the portrait of a boy dressed in blue, now in the possession of Lord Grosvenor, to show the fallacy of this doctrine.”
That seems to be all there is to it; and, once started, the story became widespread and was handed on from pen to pen and from lip to lip, until nearly everybody believes it.
Let us turn, however, to some of the authorities. First to F. G. Stephens:
“Master Jonathan Buttall was the son of Mr. Jonathan Buttall, an ironmonger in an extensive way of business, living at 31 Greek Street (at the corner of King Street), Soho, between 1728 (if not before) and 1768, when he died. According to the _Book for a Rainy Day_, he was ‘an immensely rich man.’ The younger Buttall continued in the business of his father until 1796, when his effects were sold by Sharpe and Coxe, the well-known auctioneers. These effects included premises in Soho and the City, a share in Drury Lane Theatre, many drawings by Gainsborough, and pictures by the same hand and others, wine, and musical instruments. It has been asserted that a _Blue Boy_ (for there can hardly be a doubt that more than one version of the work exists) was sold on this occasion.
“A story has been credited that _The Blue Boy_ was produced by Gainsborough to refute a dictum of Sir Joshua Reynolds, delivered in his _Eighth Discourse_ to the Students of the Royal Academy, December 10, 1778: ‘It ought, in my opinion to be indispensably observed, that the masses of light in a picture be always of a warm, mellow color, yellow, red, or a yellowish-white; and that the blue, the grey, or the green colors be kept almost entirely out of these masses, and be used only to support and set off these warm colors; and for this purpose, a small proportion of cold colors will be sufficient. Let this conduct be reversed; let the light be cold and the surrounding colors warm, as we often see in the works of the Roman and Florentine painters, and it will be out of the power of Art, even in the hands of Rubens or Titian, to make a picture splendid and harmonious.’
“It is obvious that the _Eighth Discourse_ may have been delivered covertly to depreciate a picture which had been exhibited eight years before, but this is not likely; or it may be assumed that the painting was produced to demonstrate the futility of the President’s counsel. It is obvious that Gainsborough might, and probably did, find occasion to illustrate a principle which is apparently opposed to the dictum of Reynolds, without reference to the _Eighth Discourse_, or previous utterance of the P. R. A. Van Dyck repeatedly employed masses of blue in draperies, with results which are at least equal to those of the picture before us. The _Children of Charles the First_ at Windsor is an example of the fact.[34] Leslie and every practical critic recognized that Gainsborough had evaded the full and just method of controverting the declaration of Sir Joshua rather than successfully assailed it.
“The picture before us is known to have been exhibited at the British Institution with a collection of Gainsborough’s works--the first formed independently of the artist and his wife--in 1814, under the title of _Portrait of a Youth_ and again at the same place, in 1834, as ‘117, _A Young Gentleman in a Landscape_; the Picture known as _The Boy in Blue_.’ It was at Manchester in 1857; the International Exhibition in 1862; and at the Royal Academy in 1870. The last occasion evoked the discussion above alluded to, when the other _Blue Boy_ became prominent. The question may be summed up by saying that probably the younger Buttall had a version of his own portrait, while the Prince had another.
“Reynolds, by the way of supporting his own dictum, produced _A Yellow Boy_ in the ‘_Portrait of Charles, Earl of Dalkeith_’ with an owl and a dog, which was No. 132 at the Grosvenor Exhibition, in 1884. ‘_A Portrait of a Lady_,’ by Gainsborough, known as ‘_The Blue Lady_’ was at the British Institution in 1859; ‘_The Pink Boy_’ (Master Nicholls, grandson of Dr. Mead), by Gainsborough, was at the Academy in 1879, No. 39; it has recently been sold to a member of the Rothschild family. _The Blue Boy_ is at once the complement and the antithesis of _Mrs. Graham_ (born Cathcart), now in the Scottish National Gallery (Edinburgh).”
Turning now to M. H. Spielmann in _British Portrait Painting_:
“In the view expressed by the late F. G. Stephens and others--an opinion I am inclined to share--the portrait known as _The Blue Boy_, more properly Master Jonathan Buttall, belongs to the year 1770, or thereabouts, and not to a period ten years later, as is argued by those who desire, in the face of internal evidence, to apply to it a passage--usually cited incorrectly--in Sir Joshua Reynolds’s _Eighth Discourse_ (delivered in 1778), against the use of masses of cold blue. The stricture could not possibly apply to this picture, which triumphs by virtue of its _warm_ blue, as it does by nobility of pose (more suggestive of a prince, as we imagine a prince should be, than of the son of a wealthy ironmonger of Greek Street), by the well controlled power and dignity made manifest throughout and by the brilliant brush charged with fat paint. The finely posed head with its admirably expressed character of boyhood and a good deal of sturdy doggedness behind the intelligent eyes, is rendered a little more heavily than is Gainsborough’s wont; but that it is a masterpiece of portraiture, as it is of color, cannot be challenged. This portrait, which from its manner may be believed to have been painted eight years before the father’s death and not two years after it, is the first to show Gainsborough’s outstanding genius as a painter of independent thought and striking modernity. At the same time it should be pointed out an earlier _Blue Boy_ by him exists in the portrait of his nephew, Edward Gardiner, painted in 1768.