Lot 4: John Raphael Smith (1752-1812)

Portrait of John Horne Tooke (1736-1812), small full-length, in a black sleeping hat and blue suit, reclining on a bed
inscribed '[Arrangements] for/the third Vol of/Diversions of Purley' (lower left, on a scroll)
pastel
25 1/8 x 17 3/4 in. (64 x 45 cm.); and a mezzotint engraving of the same by W. Ward (2)

Davies Davenport and by descent to his son
Lt.-Col. Walter Bromley Davenport, D.L., M.P.; Christie's, London, 24 July, 1953, lot 34 (unsold) and by descent in the family to the present owners.

William Ward, mezzotint, 1811.

The property of the Bromley-Davenport Family

John Horne Tooke was a radical and a philologist, born John Horne on 25 June 1736 in Newport Street, Westminster the third of seven children. He attended Eton College and graduated from St John's College, Cambridge in 1758 ambitious for a legal career, however his father insisted on a career in the church and Horne took holy orders. In 1764, having returned from France, he joined in the popular support of William Pitt in opposition to the Earl of Bute and the sense of outrage at the treatment of John Wilkes over the Bill of Rights. In the following year he published The Petition of an Englishman in defence of Wilkes. Around this date he abandoned his clerical dress and began 'flaunting... in very unclerical suits of flowered silk and gold lace' and it is possibly in one of these unconventional outfits that Smith painted him. Under Horne's auspices the Society of the Supporters of the Bill of Rights was formed in 1769.

In 1773 he moved to New Brentford where he came to the aid of his friend William Tooke, whose property near Purley was affected by the enclosure bill. Horne won the case and Tooke was extremely grateful, showering him with gifts and promises of inheritance, which were ultimately largely unfulfilled, however in 1782 Horne took the surname Tooke, supposedly as an indication that he was to be considered his heir. It was the friendship between these two men that was commemorated in one of his most significant writings Epea Pteroenta or Diversions of Purley, published 1783. A third volume was planned, as we can see in the present pastel, but Horne burnt all his papers shortly before his death. Diversions of Purley was an attempt to democratise language and at the time was widely read and highly influential.

Horne was a member of the Society of Constitutional Information and instrumental in organising the distribution of Thomas Paine's first part of The Rights of Man. Yet he was viewed as subversive by the Government and sent to the Tower in 1794; his subsequent acquital was cause for great celebrations. Subsequently, perhaps due to the sobering effects of imprisonment and failing health his conduct was more cautious. He died on 18 March 1812 in Wimbledon.

Horne was a central figure in the burgeoning reform movement of the 18th Century and his name appears in the chronicles of many of the seminal events of British political history during this period.

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