James Caulfeild, fourth Viscount Charlemont (Later first Earl of Charlemont)

Pompeo Batoni, 1708–1787, Italian, James Caulfeild, fourth Viscount Charlemont (Later first Earl of Charlemont), between 1753 and 1756

Print Record | Large Print Record

Creator:: Pompeo Batoni, 1708–1787
Title:: James Caulfeild, fourth Viscount Charlemont (Later first Earl of Charlemont)
Former Title(s):: James Caulfeild, 4th Viscount Charlemont (Later 1st Earl of Charlemont) [1998, This Other Eden: Paintings from the Yale Center for British Art, exhibition catalogue]
James, 1st Earl of Charlemont [1985, Cormack, YCBA Concise Catalogue]
Date:: between 1753 and 1756
Materials & Techniques:: Oil on canvas
Dimensions:: 38 1/2 x 29 inches (97.8 x 73.7 cm), Frame: 46 1/4 × 36 5/8 × 2 3/4 inches (117.5 × 93 × 7 cm)
Inscription(s)/Marks/Lettering:: Label on verso, lower center: “[handwritten] V[...] | [typed] Thos. Agnew & Sons Ltd. | No. 18986 | Fine Art Publishers [Thos. Agnew & Sons logo] To H.M The King | London, | [...] Old Bond Street | Picadilly, W[...]”; center: “Portrait of | ‘James, 1st Earl of Charlemont’ | By | Pompeo Battoni.”; upper center: “Leger Galleries | Art [?Sel]lers | 13 Old Bo[nd?] Street, W.1. | Established 1892 | Title James, 1st Earl of Charlemont | Artist Pompeo Batoni | Date November, 1973 | Old and Modern Masters | Early English Watercolours”; upper center: “Tate Gallery Millbank London SW1P 4RG Tel: 071-887 8000 Fax: 071-887 8007 | GRAND TOUR: The Lure of Italy in the 18th Century | 10 October 1996 - 5 January 1997 | Cat. No.: 18 | Pompeo Girolamo Batoni | James Caulfield, later 1st Earl of Charlemont 1753-5 | Oil on canvas 97.7 x 73.7 | Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection”; upper center: “Greater London Council I.B.24 | THE IVEAGH BEQUEST, KENWOOD | | HAMPSTEAD LANE, LONDON NW3 7JR | Exhibition Pompeo Batoni, 1982 Cat. no: 10 | Artist | Title [...] | Charlemont | Medium & size | Inscription | Collection Yale Center for British Art | No reproduction without permission”
Credit Line:: Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:: Public Domain
Accession Number:: B1974.3.26
Classification:: Paintings
Collection:: Paintings and Sculpture
Link to Frame:: B1974.3.26FR
Subject Terms:: coliseum | costume | earl | Grand Tour | man | portrait | ruins | window
Associated Places:: Colosseum | Europe | Italy | Lazio | Rome
Associated People:: Caulfeild, James, first earl of Charlemont (1728–1799), politician
Access:: On view at the Yale University Art Gallery
Link:: https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:4988
Export:: XML
IIIF Manifest:: JSON

Pompeo Batoni was one of the most popular Italian artists of the eighteenth century, and for many aristocratic Grand Tourists, having one’s portrait painted by Batoni was an essential part of a visit to Rome. In 1746, at age eighteen, the Dublin-born Charlemont embarked on an extensive Grand Tour that took him not only to Italy but to Greece and Asia Minor over a period of eight years. He commissioned this half-length portrait from Batoni as well as a full-length version (now lost). This is the earliest of Batoni’s Grand Tour portraits to include a view of the Roman Colosseum, setting a pattern that was to become popular with later sitters. Charlemont was one of the great art patrons of the age, as well as a leading politician who pushed for the peaceful emancipation of Ireland from direct English rule.

Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016

Born in Dublin, the Anglo-Irishman James Caulfeild (1728-1799) became the 4th Viscount Charlemont in 1734, upon the death of his father. At the age of eighteen, he set out on a Grand Tour that extended through Italy, Greece, and the Levant (as the Middle East was then known). He was gone for nearly ten years. Based comfortably in Rome, he made friends with the painter Joshua Reynolds, the architects Robert Adam and William Chambers, the engraver Giambattista Piranesi, and the philosopher David Hume. Charlemont commissioned this portrait from Batoni-as well as a full-length version (now lost)-in the early 1750s, and both were delivered to him in 1756, two years after his return to Ireland. This is the earliest of Batoni's Grand Tour portraits to include a view of the Roman Colosseum, setting a pattern that was to become popular with later sitters. Charlemont was one of the great art patrons of the age, as well as a leading politician who pushed for the peaceful emancipation of Ireland from direct English rule.

Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2010

If Lord Cholmondeley goes to Rome, pray tell him I wish he would bring me a head of himself by Pompeio Battoni.
Horace Walpole to Horace Mann, 1771 [1]

As Horace Walpole's comment suggests, Pompeo Batoni was the portraitist of choice for young British men on the Grand Tour in the second half of the eighteenth century. In the 1730s and 1740s he had made his name primarily as a painter of historical and religious subjects, but his portraits catapulted him into the ranks of the most famous European artists of his time.
James Caul?eld, born in Dublin in 1728, became the 4th Viscount Charlemont at the death of his father in 1734. He left his home in Ireland in 1746 for his Grand Tour, a voyage on the European continent that mainly consisted of a lengthy stay in Italy and had become by mid-century a mandatory element of a British gentleman's education. Charlemont's Grand Tour was extensive: from 1746 until his return in 1754, he traveled throughout Italy visiting, among other places, Naples, Florence, and Turin; outside Italy he explored the major archeological sites of classical Antiquity in Greece, the Levant, and Egypt. His main base throughout his Grand Tour was, of course, Rome, where he was an integral part of British social and artistic circles. This portrait was apparently commissioned sometime in the early 1750s. By 1754 he had returned to Dublin and, in October of that year, he began a distinguished career as a politician, soon making a name for himself as one of the leading champions for Ireland's peaceful emancipation from England. He was made 1st Earl of Charlemont in 1763.
Batoni's progress on the portrait is documented in letters to Charlemont from his agent John Parker:
26 July 1754: Pompeo has not finished nor can I get the portrait out of his hands; he is paid half of the great one. 24 December 1755: Pompeo…had promised me to get [the portraits] done by such a day and failed me… I have so tormented him since, as there is little to doe to them, so hope in a few days to send them, together with the rest of your Lordship's pictures.
28 February 1756: I have just got your Lordship's two portraits from Pompeo, I shall forward them with the rest of the pictures. [2]
Batoni frequently painted variously-sized versions of his portraits, which young Tourists often gave away as spectacular mementos of their travels, and it is likely that the "great one" Parker refers to was a full-length, more elaborate version of the present work.
One of Batoni's first specifically "Grand Tour" portraits, this is also the earliest known composition in which he included a view of the Roman Colosseum-seen here through a window in the upper right corner of the canvas. After this painting Batoni's formula for Grand Tour portraits became increasingly static: most often dressed in their ?nest "Italian" clothes, Tourists were surrounded by overwhelming vistas of the recognizable sites of the Roman landscape, by famous antiquities, and, occasionally, by some of the works of art (either antique or modern) that they had purchased. Although Charlemont did not bring home the Colosseum, he was an avid collector of ancient and modern works of art; through his patronage he greatly contributed to the understanding of Antiquity and, by extension, to the development of art and architecture in mid- to late-eighteenth-century England and Ireland.

[1] Clark and Bowron, 42.
[2] Obid., 265.

Julia Marciari-Alexander

Julia Marciari-Alexander, This other Eden, paintings from the Yale Center for British Art , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1998, pp. 92-93, no. 32, ND1314.3 Y36 1998 (YCBA)

Ireland - Art on a World Stage 1690-1840 (The Art Institute of Chicago, 2015-03-17 - 2015-06-07) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Pompeo Batoni - "The Best Painter in Italy" (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2007-10-21 - 2008-01-27) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Tate Centenary Development (Tate Britain, 2001-09-25 - 2004-04-23) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

This Other Eden : British Paintings from the Paul Mellon Collection at Yale (Art Gallery of South Australia, 1998-09-16 - 1998-11-15) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

This Other Eden : British Paintings from the Paul Mellon Collection at Yale (Queensland Art Gallery, 1998-07-15 - 1998-09-06) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

This Other Eden : British Paintings from the Paul Mellon Collection at Yale (Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1998-05-01 - 1998-07-05) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

Grand Tour - The Lure of Italy in the Eighteenth Century (Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, 1997-02-05 - 1997-04-07) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Grand Tour - The Lure of Italy in the Eighteenth Century (Tate Britain, 1996-10-10 - 1997-01-06) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Life in England 1750 - 1850 (Paul Mellon Arts Center, 1990-03-27 - 1990-05-21) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Pompeo Batoni and his British Patrons (Kenwood House, 1982-06-08 - 1982-08-09) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Liliana Barroero, Pompeo Batoni 1708-1787, l'Europa delle corti e il Grand Tour , Silvana Editoriale, Milano, 2008, pp. 156-57, 160,, NJ18 B297P65 2008+ (YCBA) [YCBA]

Edgar Peters Bowron, Pompeo Batoni : a complete catalogue of his paintings, Yale University Press, 2016, vol. 1, pp. 220-223, no. 188, fig. 188, NJ18.B68 2016 Oversize (YCBA) [YCBA]

Edgar Peters Bowron, Pompeo Batoni, prince of painters in eighteenth-century Rome , Yale University Press, New Haven Houston, 2007, pp. 40, 41, 43,, fig. 38, NJ18 B297 B672 2007 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Anthony M. Clark, Pompeo Batoni, a complete catalogue of his works with an introductory text , Phaidon, Oxford [Oxfordshire], 1985, pp. 31, 39, 45, no. 190, NJ18 B297 A12 C53 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Malcolm Cormack, Concise Catalogue of Paintings in the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1985, pp. 20-21, N590.2 .A83 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Fintan Cullen, The Irish face, redefining the Irish portrait , National Portrait Gallery, London, 2004, p. 87, no. 54, N7600 C85 2004 (YCBA) [YCBA]

William Laffan, Ireland : crossroads of art and design, 1690-1840, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, 2015, pp. 106, 107, 226, no. 12, fig. 13 (p. 107), N6787 .I74 2015 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

William Laffan, Thomas Roberts, landscape and patronage in eighteenth-century Ireland. , Churchill House Press, Tralee, 2009, p. 138, fig. 104, NJ18.R544 L35 2009 + (YCBA) [YCBA]

Julia Marciari-Alexander, This other Eden : Paintings from the Yale Center for British Art, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1998, pp. 92-93, no. 32, ND1314.3 Y36 1998 (YCBA) [YCBA]

John McDonald, A Feast of Mellon, Sydney Morning Herald, May 9, 1998, p. 14, ProQuest News & Newspapers : Global Newsstream [ORBIS]

Robert O'Byrne, A Vanishing World, March 2015, p. 124, fig. 5, N1 A54 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Paul Mellon's Legacy : a passion for British art [large print labels], , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2007, v. 3, N5220 M552 P381 2007 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Pompeo Batoni and his British patrons., Greater London Council, London, 1982, pp. 36-7, 90, no. 10, 22, NJ18 B297 B68 (YCBA) + [YCBA]

Sotheby's Sale Catalogue : Catalogue of Old Master Drawings and Paintings : 10 April 1957, Sotheby's, London, April 10, 1957, p. 9, Lot 54, Film B12 Reel 40 (YCBA) [YCBA]

James Stourton, The British as art collectors : from the Tudors to the present, , Scala Publishers, London, 2012, p. 84, fig. 97, N5245 .S595 2012 + OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Denys Sutton, Magick Land, [Editorial] , Apollo, v. 99, no. 148, June 1974, pp. 398, 401, pl. II, N1 A54 + (YCBA) [YCBA]

Andrew Wilton, The Grand Tour, the lure of Italy in the eighteenth century , Tate Britain, London, 1996, N8214.5.I8 [ORBIS]

Andrew Wilton, The Grand tour, the lure of Italy in the eighteenth century , Tate Publishing, London, 1996, p. 61, no. 18, N8214.5 I8 G7 1996 + OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

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