Charles Stanhope, third Earl of Harrington and Marcus Richard Fitzroy Thomas
Date:
1782
Materials & Techniques:
Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
93 x 56 inches (236.2 x 142.2 cm)
Inscription(s)/Marks/Lettering:
Inscribed, lower left: "Charles Earl of Harrington"
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1977.14.69
Classification:
Paintings
Collection:
Paintings and Sculpture
Subject Terms:
light | shine | costume | portrait | servant | man | helmet | war | battle | armor | colonel | boy | earl | clouds | sky
Currently On View:
Not on view
Exhibition History:
Figures of Empire: Slavery and Portraiture in Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Britain (Yale Center for British Art, 2014-10-02 - 2014-12-14)Art in Focus : William III (Yale Center for British Art, 2011-04-08 - 2011-07-31)This Other Eden : British Paintings from the Paul Mellon Collection at Yale (Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1998-05-01 - 1998-07-05)This Other Eden : British Paintings from the Paul Mellon Collection at Yale (Queensland Art Gallery, 1998-07-15 - 1998-09-06)This Other Eden : British Paintings from the Paul Mellon Collection at Yale (Art Gallery of South Australia, 1998-09-16 - 1998-11-15)
Publications:
David Bindman, Am I not a man and a brother?, British art and slavery in the eighteenth century , 1994, pp. 71-72, fig. 29, V 0374 (YCBA)David Bindman, Roubiliac and the Eighteenth-Century Monument : Sculpture as Theatre, , The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, New Haven and London, 1995, p. 141, NJ18 R764 A12 B55 1995 (YCBA)David Bindman, The Image of the Black in Western Art : From the " Age of Discovery" to the Age of Abolition, , vol. 3, part 3, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2010, pp. 144, 145, fig. 137, N8217.B535 I42 2010+ (YCBA) Citations are to Vol. 3, Part 3British Art at Yale, Apollo, vol.105, April 1977, pp. 245, 247-248, fig. 18, N1 .A54 + OVERSIZE (YCBA)Linda Colley, Britons : forging the nation, 1707-1837, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2014, p. 198, fig. 29, DA485 .C65 2014 (YCBA)Malcolm Cormack, Concise Catalogue of Paintings in the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1985, pp. 184, 185, N590.2 .A83 (YCBA)Exhibition at the Royal Academy, Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser, May 1783, p.3, Film S1460 (SML Microfilm)Exhibition of the Royal Academy, the Fifteenth, 1783, Royal Academy of Arts, London, p. 10, no. 193, N5054 A53 1783Figures of Empire : Slavery and Portraiture in Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Britain, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 2014, pp. 26-27, 43, fig.10, chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://britishart.yale.edu/sites/default/files/inline/Figures%20of%20Empire_booklet_FINAL.pdfFigures of Empire : Slavery and Portraiture in Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Britain, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 2014, pp. 26-27, 43, fig.10, V 2556 (YCBA)Catherine M. Gordon, British paintings Hogarth to Turner, Frederick Warne, London, 1981, p. 57, ND466 .G67 (YCBA)Algernon Graves, A history of the works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A., Henry Graves & Co., London, UK, 1899, p. 928 ( v. 2), NJ18 R36 G73 OVERSIZE (YCBA) Also available on Microfiche: Fiche B6 (YCBA)Mark Hallett, Reynolds : portraiture in action, The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, New Haven, 2014, p. 358, fig. no. 344, NJ18.R36 H35 2014 OVERSIZE (YCBA)Victoria Hepburn, Naming Marcus : Sir Joshua Reynolds' portrait of Charles Stanhope, third Earl of Harrington, and Marcus Richard Fitzroy Thomas, Yale Center for British Art, Accessed January 17, 2023, https://britishart.yale.edu/node/1776/ Erica James, Commentary on Charles Stanhope, Third Earl of Harrington by Joshua Reynolds, [ Website ] , Yale Center for British Art, Accessed 11/25/2015, 27.06 minutes, http://interactive.britishart.yale.edu/slavery-and-portraiture/326/commentary-by-erica-jamesTitus Kaphar, Commentary on Charles Stanhope, Third Earl of Harrington, by Joshua Reynolds, [ Website ] , Yale Center for British Art, Accessed 11/24/2015, 34:43 minutes, http://interactive.britishart.yale.edu/slavery-and-portraiture/325/commentary-by-titus-kapharCyra Levenson, Haptic Blackness : the Double Life of an 18th-century Bust, , British Art Studies, , Autumn 2015, fig. 11, http://www.britishartstudies.ac.uk/issues/issue-index/issue-1/bust-of-a-manHew Locke, Commentary on Charles Stanhope, Third Earl of Harrington, by Joshua Reynolds, [ Website ] , Yale Center for British Art, Accessed 11/25/2015, 20.09 minutes, http://interactive.britishart.yale.edu/slavery-and-portraiture/339/commentary-by-hew-lockeDavid Mannings, Sir Joshua Reynolds, a complete catalogue of his paintings , Yale University Press, New Haven, 2000, v. 1, p. 431; v. 2, p. 529, no.. 1692, fig. 1393, NJ18 R36 A12 M35 2000 OVERSIZE (YCBA)Julia Marciari-Alexander, This other Eden : Paintings from the Yale Center for British Art, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1998, p. 104, no. 38, ND1314.3 Y36 1998 (YCBA)Painter's mirror for 1783 : Sir Joshua Reynolds, Morning Herald, London, May 2, 1783, 17th and 18th Century Burney CollectionPaul 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)Slavery and Portraiture in 18th-century Atlantic Britain, [Website] , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 2015, https://interactive.britishart.yale.edu/slavery-and-portraiture/Sotheby's, Sotheby's sale catalogue : Catalogue of Fine Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Paintings : 23 November 1966, Sotheby's, London, November 23, 1966, p. 24, lot 76, Auction Catalogues (YCBA)Malcolm Warner, Great British paintings from American collections : Holbein to Hockney, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2001, p. 6, fig. 4, ND464 W27 2001 (YCBA)Ellis Waterhouse, An Impressive Panorama of British Portraiture, Apollo, v. 105, no. 182, April 1977, pp. 245, 247-8, fig. 18, N1 A54 + (YCBA) Another copy of this article may be found in a separately bound and catalogued copy of this issue located on the Mellon Shelf [call number : N5220 M552 A7 1977 + (YCBA)]Ellis Waterhouse, Reynolds, Phaidon, New York, NY, 1973, pl. 102, NJ18 R36 W37 1973 + (YCBA)William III, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2011, p. 22, V2340John Wilmerding, Essays in honor of Paul Mellon, collector and benefactor : Essays, , National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC & Hanover, NH, 1986, pp. 10, 12, fig. 2, N7442.2 M455 1986 (YCBA)Yale Center for British Art, Selected paintings, drawings & books, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 1977, p. 32, N590.2 A82 (YCBA)
Gallery Label:
The fourteen-year-old boy in this portrait was recently identified as Marcus Richard Fitzroy Thomas. He sat for Reynolds on July 10, 1782 — the day after Charles Stanhope, third Earl of Harrington, had a sitting. Stanhope had recently returned from a military post in Jamaica, and he likely brought Thomas — who may have been attached to his regiment or enslaved on a plantation owned by Stanhope’s step- father-in-law — back to Britain as an attendant. Thomas was later baptized, when he was nineteen, on the same day as Stanhope’s newborn child. Much remains to be uncovered about Thomas’s life, though parish registers reveal that he married and moved to Sussex, where his son John Henry was born in 1794. Thomas later returned to London, where in 1816 he died, just thirteen days after he was admitted to a workhouse for the poor. He is buried in Camden Town Cemetery, now St. Martin’s Gardens. Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2022
Provenance:
Commissioned by Charles Stanhope, third Earl of Harrington (1753-1829), from Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), the artist, in 1782; by descent to his son, Charles Stanhope, fourth Earl of Harrington (1780-1851); by descent to his brother, Leicester Fitzgerald Charles Stanhope, fifth Earl of Harrington (1784-1862); by descent to his son, Sidney Seymour Hide Stanhope, sixth Earl of Harrington (1845–1866); by descent to his first cousin, Charles Wyndham Stanhope, seventh Earl of Harrington (1809-1881); by descent to his son, Charles Stanhope, eighth Earl of Harrington (1844-1917); by descent to his brother, Dudley Henry Eden Stanhope, ninth Earl of Harrington (1859-1928); by descent to his son, Charles Stanhope, tenth Earl of Harrington (1887-1929); by descent to his son, William Stanhope, eleventh Earl of Harrington (1922-2009); possibly purchased by Thomas Agnew & Sons at Sotheby’s, London, England, November 23, 1966 (lot 76, ‘Portrait of Charles, 3rd Earl of Harrington, full-length, wearing armour, attended by a black page boy, a battle in the distance’), in "Fine eighteenth and nineteenth century paintings" [a]; purchased by Paul Mellon, December 1967; by whom given to the Yale Center for British Art, December 1977. Citations: --- [a] Sotheby’s. November 23, 1966. Fine eighteenth and nineteenth century paintings, part I. https://worldcat.org/en/title/171437662