Lot 130: GAWEN HAMILTON C.1697-1737

A FAMILY CONVERSATION PIECE

measurements note
57 by 66 cm., 22½ by 26 in.

oil on canvas

PROVENANCE

J. Andrews, London, from whom acquired by Dr Donovan;
Sir Harry Stephen Thompson, Kirby Hall, Ouseburn, Yorkshire, 1866, by descent to his son, Sir Henry Meysey Meysey-Thompson (1845-1929), later Lord Knaresborough;
Agnew, 1934;
Paul Drey, New York, 1942;
Arthur Tooth and Sons, Ltd., London, 1946;
Sir Reginald Macdonald-Buchanan, 1953;
M. Knoedler and Co., Inc., New York, from whom purchased by Walter P. Chrysler Jnr., May 1976, by whose estate sold, Sotheby's, New York, 1st June 1989, lot 27

EXHIBITED

Yorkshire Fine Arts and Industrial Exhibition, 1866, no.454;
Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, 1938;
Montreal, Canada, 1942;
Arthur Tooth and Sons, Recent Acquisitions, 22nd October-16th November 1946, no.11;
The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, May 1976

LITERATURE

Austin Dobson, William Hogarth, 1879, pp.187-188; 1893, p.351; 1902, p.187; 1907, p.221;
R.B. Beckett, William Hogarth: Catalogue of Paintings attributed to William Hogarth, 1947/48, Part 1, Group portraits under 'The Thornhill Family, *1' (as possibly by Gawen Hamilton in a handwritten correction in the author's hand);
Illustrated London News, 19th October 1946, p.445;
R.B. Beckett, 'Portraits of Hogarth's Family', The Connoisseur, September 1948, p.33;
The Chrysler Museum Bulletin, 'English Portraits on View', Vol.5, no.9, September 1976 (as by William Hogarth of the Thornhill Family)

NOTE

This fine conversation piece dates from the early 1730s, a period which saw Hamilton producing a number of portraits which, at their best, can rival his contemporary, William Hogarth. The identity of the family remains uncertain. Traditionally they have been identified as Sir James Thornhill and his family, with his uncle and patron, Dr Sydenham. However, both the ages of the sitters and known portraits of members of the Thornhill family make this impossible. Several conversation pieces, formerly attributed to Hogarth, have been erroneously identified as the family of Sir James Thornhill, with whose daughter Hogarth had eloped in 1729. In the present case this identification was probably strengthened by the fact that the central seated figure is being shown an academic drawing, clearly a reference to his connoisseurship and his love of the arts. It has also been suggested that the picture may relate to Hamilton's portrait of John Wootton and his family of 1736.

Gawen Hamilton was born in Hamilton in the west of Scotland, and settled in London in c.1726. His conversation pieces were greatly admired by George Vertue who wrote, on the artist's early death in 1737, that 'it was the opinion of many Artists....that he had some peculiar excellence wherein he outdid Mr Hogarth in Colouring and easy gracefull likeness". Amongst his important patrons were Thomas Wentworth, 1dt Earl of Strafford, and Edward Harley, 3rd Earl of Oxford. In 1734 he painted his famous Conversation of Virtuosis at the Kings Armes (National Portrait Gallery) which included many of the most celebrated artists of the time. The attribution to Hamilton for this portrait was first suggested by R.B. Beckett.