English School
Portrait of King Edward V (1470-83), c. 1580-90
English School
Portrait of George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence (1449-1478), K.G., 1597-1603
Oil on canvas, laid down on panel
44 x 35 ½ in. (112 cm x 90 cm)
Inscribed 'GEORGIUS / DUX. CLARENTIAE CONS. CAST. DE QVEENBURGH / ANN IX. EDW. 4' upper right
Philip Mould & Company
For the posthumous reputations of some historical figures, the History plays of William Shakespeare (1564-1616) have dealt an unkind hand. King Richard III (1452-1485), for instance, could be counted among...
For
the posthumous reputations of some historical figures, the History plays of
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) have dealt an unkind hand. King Richard III
(1452-1485), for instance, could be counted among that number. For others, the
Bard has given a succinct summary that few historians could hope to rival. And
this is the case of Richard’s brother, George, Duke of Clarence (1449-1478). In
Richard III, Act 1 Scene 4,
Shakespeare’s Clarence, confined in the Tower of London, recalls a nightmare
that he has had the night before in which a ghost from his past accuses him as
‘false, fleeting, perjur’d Clarence’
Provenance
Probably commissioned by Sir Edward Hoby (1560-1617), Constable of Queenborough Castle, in the late 1590s;
Presumably acquired by Sir Humfrey Tufton, 1st Baronet (1584-1659);
Thence by descent to his son, Sir John Tufton, 2nd Baronet (c.1623-1685), by whose estate sold, 25th May 1686[1];
Possibly acquired at the Tufton Sale by Philip Sydney, 3rd Earl of Leicester (1618-1698), Penshurst Place (16 of the portrait set were hanging at Penshurst by 1728[2]);
In the collection of Henry Weysford Charles Plantagenet, 9th Earl of Loudoun, by 1866;
Thence by descent to Charles Edward Rawdon-Hastings, 11th Earl of Loudoun, until at least 1909;
A. Seligman Trevor & Co., London, 1938;
Leggatt Brothers, 1939;
Presumably acquired from above by Arthur Ronald Nall Nall-Cain, 2nd Baron Brocket (1904 –1967), by whom sold;
Sotheby’s, London, 16 July 1952, lot 19;
Bought from above by ‘Delafont’ (£78);
Private Collection, UK.
[1] See an advertisement in The London Gazette, 20th-24th May 1686.
[2] Where they were seen by Vertue, see Walpole Society, Vol. XX, pp.51-52.
Exhibitions
London, National Portrait Exhibition, 1866, no. 25;
London, Burlington Fine Arts Club, Exhibition Illustrative of Early English Portraiture, 1909, no.16, p.76.
Literature
Walpole, H. (1888) Anecdotes of Painting in England. London: Bickers and Son. Vol. I, p.65;
Vertue, G. ‘The Notebooks of George Vertue Relating to Artists and Collections in England’, Walpole Society, Volume XX, 1932, p.52;
Steinberg, S.H. ‘A Portrait of George, Duke of Clarence’, Burlington Magazine, Vol. LXXIV (January 1939), pp.35-37;
Waterhouse, E. (1950) Painting in Britain 1530-1790. New Haven: Yale University Press. pp. 40-41;
Strong, R. (1969) The English Icon: Elizabethan and Jacobean Portraiture. London: The Paul Mellon Foundation for British Art. p. 48 and fig. 45;
Tudor-Craig, P. (1973) Richard III. Exhibition Catalogue, 27 June – 7 October, National Portrait Gallery, London. p. 86, pl. 17;
Daunt, C. Portrait Sets in Tudor and Jacobean England, PhD Thesis, University of Sussex, 2015, Vol. I, pp. 84-85, Vol. II, p.220.
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