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Dressed in a dashing red jacket and blue cap, this portrait of Edward Richard Montagu, Viscount Hinchingbrooke exudes baroque panache. It was painted by the leading court artist Sir Godfrey Kneller and remained in the sitter’s family for nearly two-hundred years, until it was sold at auction in 1981.
Unlike many of Kneller’s works from this date, which were painted with the help of studio assistants, the present work, which is signed and dated, is wholly by his hand and is a revealing example of his supreme talents as a portrait painter. The strong highlights on the sitter’s jacket are painted with his characteristic flair and the complex folds of the linen shirt are brazenly reduced to a flurry of quick brushstrokes. The same brevity is observed in the headwear in which a series of rapid strokes laden with red and white paint perfectly balance the corresponding colouring in the sitter’s lips and shirt. The face is painted with...
Dressed in a dashing red jacket and blue cap, this portrait of Edward Richard Montagu, Viscount Hinchingbrooke exudes baroque panache. It was painted by the leading court artist Sir Godfrey Kneller and remained in the sitter’s family for nearly two-hundred years, until it was sold at auction in 1981.
Unlike many of Kneller’s works from this date, which were painted with the help of studio assistants, the present work, which is signed and dated, is wholly by his hand and is a revealing example of his supreme talents as a portrait painter. The strong highlights on the sitter’s jacket are painted with his characteristic flair and the complex folds of the linen shirt are brazenly reduced to a flurry of quick brushstrokes. The same brevity is observed in the headwear in which a series of rapid strokes laden with red and white paint perfectly balance the corresponding colouring in the sitter’s lips and shirt. The face is painted with thick strokes and a very subtle blending of tones, which gives the head great animation – a visual effect no assistant could conjure.
Edward Richard Montagu, Viscount Hinchingbrooke was the son of Edward Montagu, 3rd Earl of Sandwich and Lady Elizabeth Wilmot. Montagu’s father lived with a mental illness and spent much of his later life confined within the grounds of Hinchingbrook House. Consequently, Montagu assisted his father with his formal responsibilities from a young age; after embarking on The Grand Tour, aged 15-16, he took command of a troop in Sir Richard Temple's Regiment of Horse for the 1709 campaign in Flanders. At around twenty years old, he held the office of Member of Parliament (M.P.) (Whig) for Huntingdon from 1713 until 1722, after which point he held office of Lord-Lieutenant of Huntingdonshire. Having been appointed colonel of the 37th Regiment of Foot in 1717, and late gaining the rank of Colonel in the 1st Foot Guards, Montagu died in October 1722 at the age of thirty.
This work remained in the family collection at Hinchingbrook House until the mid-1950s, when the Montagu family were forced to leave the property. It was then taken, along with much of the collection, to Mapperton House, Dorset [fig. 1]. The painting is today well known through a mezzotint by John Smith, who maintained a particularly close association with Kneller and engraved around 113 of his works between the years c.1689-1723.[1] Another copy after this portrait is currently in the collection at Mapperton.
[1] ‘John Smith mezzotint printmaker biography’, The National Portrait Gallery. Available at:
https://www.npg.org.uk/collect... (accessed 13 June 2024).
