Portrait of Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford (1717-1797)

Strawberry Hill ID: sh-000073
c. 1756-7
Reynolds, Joshua (English painter, writer, and collector, 1723-1792)


Painting
Oil on canvas
127 x 101 cm
Marquess of Hertford, Ragley Hall, Warwickshire. National Portrait Gallery, London. Purchased with help from the Heritage Lottery Fund, The Art Fund and the Dame Helen Gardner Bequest, 1999. 6520

Strawberry Hill History

Object History

Provenance: Ragley Copy: Not Strawberry Hill Collection. Probably given by the sitter to his cousin, Francis Seymour Conway, 1st Marquess of Hertford; thence by descent. National Portrait Gallery Copy: Not Strawberry Hill Collection. Apparently painted for Grosvenor Bedford (1708-71), the sitter’s deputy as usher of the Exchequer , still in the Bedford family 24 December 1847 when Sir Robert Peel wrote to John Smith, dealer, declining to buy it; Lady Colum Crichton-Stuart; bt by 3rd Marquess of Lansdowne before the Grosvenor Charles Bedford sale of 1861; thence by descent until 1999 when acquired by private treaty sale from the Bowood Collection with assitance from the Heritage Lottery Fund, the NACF, and the Gallery’s Helen Gardner Fund.

Exhibition History: Ragley Copy: Worcester 1882, no. 62. "Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill," Yale Center for British Art, 15 October 2009 - 3 January 2010, cat. no. 1.
National Portrait Gallery Copy: "Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill," Victoria and Albert Museum, 5 March 2010 - 4 July 2010, cat. no. 2.

Bibliography: Ragley Copy:
C. Kingsley Adams and W. S. Lewis, “The Portraits of Horace Walpole,” The Walpole Society 42 (1970): A.13.1, plate 14.
Ellis Waterhouse, Reynolds (London: Kegan Paul, Trench Trubner, 1941), 41, 43, 120.
Nicholas Penny, Reynolds (New York: Abrams, 1986), no. 28.
David Mannings, Sir Joshua Reynolds: A Complete Catalogue of his Paintings 2 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), no.1821.
John Ingamells, National Portrait Gallery: Mid-Georgian Portraits, 1760-1790 (London: National Portrait Gallery, 2004), 369.
National Portrait Gallery Copy:
Ellis Waterhouse, Reynolds (London: Kegan Paul, Trench Trubner, 1941), 41.
C. Kingsley Adams and W. S. Lewis, “The Portraits of Horace Walpole,” The Walpole Society 42 (1970): A.13.2, plate 15.
David Mannings, Sir Joshua Reynolds: A Complete Catalogue of his Paintings 2 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), no.1819.
John Ingamells, National Portrait Gallery: Mid-Georgian Portraits, 1760-1790 (London: National Portrait Gallery, 2004), 368-369.
Martin Postle, ed. Joshua Reynolds: the creation of celebrity (London: Tate Publishing, 2005). Exhibition catalog. Palazzo dei Diamenti, Ferrara and Tate Britain, London (2005), no. 32.