Lot 62: View of Highcliffe House, Hampshire, from the South East; and View of Highcliffe House, Hampshire, from the East, with Christ Church and Hengistbury Head in the distance

Charles Steuart (Scottish active 1762-1790)
View of Highcliffe House, Hampshire, from the South East; and View of Highcliffe House, Hampshire, from the East, with Christ Church and Hengistbury Head in the distance
both signed and dated (the latter indistinctly) 'Cha.s Stewart 1783' (lower left and centre left respectively)
oil on canvas
29 x 53½ in. (73.7 x 135.8 cm.)
a pair (2)

Presumably painted for John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute (1713-1791) and by inheritance to his younger son, the Hon. Sir Charles Stuart.
with Leggatt Bros., London, from whom acquired by the Hon. Lady Cotterell in 1961 for £11,000 and later that year given to her son the Hon. Christopher Chetwode.

These pictures, and a third of the same size in a private collection (F. Russell, John, 3rd Earl of Bute: Patron and Collector , London, 2004, pl. 77), showing the house from the west, are the key records of the remarkable house built at Highcliffe for John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute. In 1775 Bute, the former Prime Minister, had called in Robert Nasmith (d. 1793) to assist with the building of his cottage for the 'Sea, Air and Bathing' ( op. cit. , p. 175) and it was he who undertook the additions of 1783 shown in these pictures, which correspond very closely with two gouaches, also dated 1783, by Adam Callender in the Victoria and Albert Museum (nos. P.39 and 40.1953). The View of Highcliffe from the West was engraved by W. Watts, The Seats of the Nobility and Gentry, in a Collection of the most interesting Picturesque Views , London, 1784, pl. LXV.

Charles Steuart was evidently Lord Bute's topographical painter of choice. He supplied two views of Luton Park in 1776 and four smaller canvases of the park there in 1781. The Highcliffe views were followed by two views of Mount Stuart in 1784 and a further canvas of the following year. In 1785 he also supplied a view of the Hermitage at Mount Stuart, the pendant of which, of the Racers Burn, is of 1781: the five views were based on drawings by Bute's daughter, Lady Mary Lowther, for whose husband, Sir James Lowther, later 1st Earl of Lonsdale, Steuart painted a pair of views of Lowther Castle, Westmorland.