Introduction to SSB 47 (4-27 September 1857) by Philip Cottrell

NB. All page references are to SSB 47 and catalogue numbers refer to items from the Treasures Exhibition’s Gallery of Ancient Masters unless otherwise specified.

Scharf’s new duties as Secretary of the National Portrait Gallery did not begin to regularly occupy him until mid-October 1857, leaving him with enough time to re-establish himself in Manchester for weeks-on-end in order to make daily sketching visits to the Art Treasures Palace (he still had his entry season ticket after all, even if he had had to pay for it himself).1 During the period covered by SSB 47, Friday 4 to Sunday 27 September, Scharf was almost continually in Manchester, returning to London only briefly between Monday 7 and Wednesday 9 September). On Monday 14 September, Scharf’s aunt recorded in her diary that she had received “a note from George to say he was constantly at the [Art Treasures] Palace hard at work”.2 Before the Exhibition’s closure on 17 October, it is understandable that Scharf wished to fully benefit from his efforts in bringing about the most comprehensive temporary gathering of old masters ever assembled from private and public collections.

On the grounds of professional and personal interest, he was keen to make more sketches and notes on some of the hundreds of paintings at Old Trafford and to do this with more care and diligence than had hitherto been possible during his countrywide survey of the collections of which they were a part. He had already begun this process in SSB 46, but in the last three sketchbooks covered by the database, SSB 47-49, he was now able to focus more intensively on the contents of the Exhibition in situ. Here also was a chance to scrutinise works from those collections he had not been able to personally review on his tour around the country during the previous year. For example, Yorkshire and the North East had not featured on Scharf’s itinerary, so important works from the collection of George William Frederick Howard, 7th Earl of Carlisle (1802-1864), at Castle Howard were

1 Scharf confirmed this in a letter to the Rev Francis Leicester of 3 March 1857 - MCL M6/2/6/2/2. On the commencement of Scharf’s regular duties at the National Portrait Gallery in October see Heath, 2018, pp. 1-2. 2 NPG7/3/7/4/1/6.

1 among those which are accorded special attention in SSB 47.3 In addition, Scharf now had the time to carefully browse other sections of the vast exhibition which had been outside his jurisdiction.

6.i. Scharf’s sketching tour of the Art Treasures Palace

As if to emphasise how Scharf now returned to Manchester as a visitor rather than a curator of the Art Treasures, he chose not (or was not able) to return to his old lodgings at Windsor Terrace under the attentive eye of Mrs Bushell. Instead, after a few days at the Spread Eagle Hotel, he found himself a new landlady, Mrs Lydia Smith, for a fortnight at an unspecified address.4 After returning from a night spent at Lancaster on 23 September (see below), Scharf moved into Scott’s Temperance Hotel in Manchester and remained there until after the completion of SSB 47 on Sunday 27 September. Nevertheless, Scharf’s daily experience of the Art Treasures Exhibition was hardly that of an ordinary visitor. For example, he was able to gain access to the exhibition building outside opening hours, including Sundays when it was closed to the public. As his activities continued beyond September, he was even allowed entry on Wednesday 7 October when the exhibition closed out of respect for a ‘National Day of Humiliation’ commemorative of that summer’s Indian Mutiny (for more on how Scharf arranged access to the Art Treasures Palace see the introduction to SSB 48, and also below).5 As previously mentioned, the only respite from his task during the course of SSB 47, was a brief two-day return trip to London, and he also stayed overnight in Lancaster between Tuesday 22 and Wednesday 23 September in order to deliver a public lecture.6 But

3 Five items – see pp. 9 recto, 16 recto, 24 recto, 40 recto, 42 recto, 48-54 recto & 84. 4 According to a list of accounts in his smaller Letts’s Diary for Friday 18 September - NPG7/3/1/13. 5 Apparently the Executive Committee had also long-since relaxed the rules on sketching and taking notes on works displayed – in a lengthy review of the exhibition as part of a lecture Scharf gave to the Historical Society of Lancashire and Cheshire in April the following year, Scharf noted that on the exhibition’s opening, the Committee had enforced “Stringent rules…against making even the slightest notes or shorthand sketches in pencil from any of the pictures” - Scharf, 1857-158, p. 317. 6 Scharf compiled some preliminary notes for this lecture in a general 1857 notebook preserved in the Heinz Archive at NPG7/3/3/3 (Private Research), and his appointment is also confirmed in his smaller Letts’s Diary - NPG7/3/1/13. From Scharf’s notes, the lecture’s content seems to have anticipated the lengthy review of the Manchester Exhibition he gave to the Historical Society of Lancashire and Cheshire in Liverpool on 15 April 1858.

2 there are sketches in SSB 47 which were made in the Art Treasures Palace on both the latter days (see pp. 49 verso-56 recto) and this attests to Scharf’s determination to frequent the exhibition as much as possible. In the evenings, Scharf relaxed with visits to the theatre and numerous trips to opera performances at the Free Trade Hall (destined to become home to the Hallé Orchestra which had been formed for the purposes of the Art Treasures Exhibition).7

As time progresses it becomes clear that Scharf wanted to make a careful and extensive record of various parts of the exhibition’s hang, and not just his own area of jurisdiction, the Gallery of Ancient Masters. With his new appointment at the National Portrait Gallery in mind, he could presumably justify the time and energy spent sketching at Manchester by also taking careful note of items from the British Portrait Gallery (he had very little interest, however, in paintings from the Modern Masters section, except portraits). With a total of sixteen-thousand works of art of all kinds on display, Scharf was keen to browse other areas of the exhibition too, particularly portrait miniatures, coins and medals. The latter would feature strongly in SSB 48, while diagrams of the hangs of the Ancient Masters and British Portrait Galleries would dominate SSB 49. In contrast, SSB 47 fully indulges Scharf’s interest in European painting.

At first glance, therefore, the composition of SSB 47 seems to be fairly straightforward: its content was compiled within the confines of the Art Treasures Palace, and it is devoted almost exclusively to studies of paintings, the majority from the Gallery of Ancient Masters. Of the ninety or so pictures sketched and studied, the Italian School dominates – around forty items. Dutch and Flemish paintings account for about fifteen pictures of interest, although in the case of Van Dyck and other Flemish artists these also intersect with paintings classed as British Portraits, of which there are around sixteen. Spanish paintings - an area of expertise in which Scharf was not particularly strong (see below) - account for about fifteen, and there are sketches of five pictures of the French School. But these are mostly Italianate in nature, incorporating works by Claude, and Poussin.

7 Visits are recorded in his smaller Letts’s Diary for Wednesday 16, Thursday 17 and Saturday 19 September- NPG7/3/1/13.

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Everything else about SSB 47 is, however, somewhat haphazardly organised. Scharf began the book by working backwards from the end, but with some sketches orientated as if working forwards so they are now presented upside down. Those drawings at the rear of the sketchbook are also therefore some of the earliest, and may be dated to 5-13 September (pp. 70-85). However, a note appended to a careful study of a Spanish painting of A Knight of Santiago and his Lady given to Ribalta at the book’s last opening suggests that it was begun on 4 September (p. 86, although nothing else in SSB 47 is recorded for that day) but finished on 13 September. On 6 September Scharf also began compiling material from the book’s beginning working forwards, and this sequence eventually accounted for the bulk of its contents. He now proceeded in a roughly chronological order until 27 September (pp. 1 recto-68 recto), and one of two openings left blank in the sketchbook at pages 68 verso–69 recto handily marks the juncture at which he meets himself coming, as it were.8 As if all this was not confusing enough, Scharf’s pagination of the sketchbook is also erratic: he establishes a recto/ verso system from the start of the book but then abandons it again for pages 58-59, and for the concluding pages 70-86.

From a careful study of SSB 47, one sometimes finds Scharf dwelling in a particular spot of the vast exhibition building for perhaps an hour or two, or even longer - there are studies of works grouped by their location, school, date, and ownership. But generally, it is hard to establish a particular pattern to his movements, and he seems to have fully enjoyed the freedom now afforded to him to wander at will, making very detailed studies of whatever seems to have caught his eye at a given moment – not a luxury often accorded to him during his last breakneck year. Scharf seems to meander in and out of other spaces and galleries. If he makes a sketch of a work hanging next to one he had already drawn and studied, he might do so several days apart. His more leisurely pace is also reflected by the fact that the verso of each page is frequently left blank (perhaps he intended to fill some of these spaces with notes later), and there is relatively little of the frantic cramming of pages with multiple compositions as in some of the earlier sketchbooks, particularly SSB 44 and 45. This more freewheeling approach was surely a relief after the hectic “picture huntings” of the previous year.9 One suspects that to wander at will, for weeks-on-end, through this

8 Another blank opening is that at pp. 40 verso to 41 recto. 9 A phrase Scharf uses in a letter to Edmund Phipps of 17 February 1857 - MCL M6/2/6/1/231.

4 amazing palace of art must have afforded him immense pleasure; all the more so given the proprietorial pride he would have felt as a result of the crucial role he had played in this great undertaking.

6.ii. 5-7 September 1857: Michelangelo’s Manchester Madonna; works by and Mantegna

In trying to establish the evolution of SSB 47’s content, one should begin by highlighting the sketches made on Saturday 5 September at the rear of the book. Pages 82-85 record Scharf in front of the North Wall of Saloon B sketching works by Poussin, including The Triumph of Bacchus belonging to the Earl of Carlisle (cat. 598), now in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City - a painting he had anxiously sought from the Earl in a letter of Wednesday 4 March. He bemoaned that without it and other such items, “the great and classic Frenchman is…in danger of not being fairly represented although his works in this country are perhaps more numerous than those of any other painter”.10 Other notable works sketched on this day include a small Ruisdael Landscape from the South Wall of the Clock Gallery (p. 82; cat. 852), Juan Carreño de Miranda’s Portrait of Charles II of Spain (pp. 80-81; cat. 739), and the curious Peasant Family (pp. 78-79; cat. 783) now in the Hatton Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The latter was then given to Velázquez, but it has since been ascribed to Antonio Amorosi. Possibly also completed on the same day are sketches made of Dutch/ Flemish works from the North Wall of Saloon C, including Frans Hals’s Portrait of a Man (cat. 681) (sold at Christie’s, New York, 1999, lot 14) and Simon Kick’s The Robbery (cat. 715) which was exhibited as Bartholomew van der Helst (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin) (see p. 76).

One then has to turn to the first page of the sketchbook in order to pick up with Scharf on Sunday 6 September on a day when the exhibition was closed to the public. It was here in the vast, silent chambers of the Art Treasures Palace that he made a meticulous sketch of Michelangelo’s Manchester Madonna (cat. 107; see also fig. 6.i) now in the , London – its popular title reflects its role as a chief cause célèbre of the exhibition. Cabinet minister Henry Labouchere (1798-1869) had bought it in 1849 as a work by Michelangelo’s master Domenico Ghirlandaio, but this was subsequently overturned in favour of the

10 MCL M6/2/6/2/15-16.

5 younger artist by Waagen.11 The attribution only gained currency at Manchester, and Scharf rewards the interest shown to it with one of his most careful studies of any item in this run of sketchbooks, using it as a means to effectively recommence SSB 47 afresh. On the following page, Scharf made a briefer study of a work he had hung directly alongside it (low in the hang, just above the dado to allow for close inspection) on the South Wall of Saloon A, Mantegna’s, Agony in the Garden (p. 2 recto; cat. 98). This was lent by the banker Thomas Baring (1799-1873).

Fig. 6.i. George Scharf, Sketch of Michelangelo’s ‘Manchester Madonna’ in situ at the Art Treasures Exhibition, 6 September 1857. Page 1 recto of Scharf Sketchbook 47. Heinz Archive, National Portrait Gallery, London.

Scharf would often return to this area of the hang over the next ten days, particularly during 14-17 September in order to make several studies of a closely comparable Agony in the Garden by Mantegna’s brother-in-law, Giovanni Bellini (pp. 16 verso-17 recto, 23 recto & 27 verso-29 recto; cat. 89) from the collection of Walter Davenport Bromley -see also the digital reconstruction, fig. 6.ii. This was a particularly important scalp for Scharf; he wrote to the owner on 4 March to express how grateful he was for the loan which was “rendered still more valuable to us by the fact that we have very few fine specimens of the master”.12 These works by Mantegna and Bellini are customarily hung as pendants in their present home, the National Gallery, London, but it was Scharf who arguably inaugruated this

11 Waagen, 1854, II, p. 417. 12 MCL M6/2/6/2/14.

6 relationship. Here on the South Wall of Saloon A, however, they were separated by two smaller intervening works, Mantegna’s Judith with the Head of Holofernes (, Washington; cat. 96) and Matteo di Giovanni’s, Madonna and Child with St John the Baptist and St Michael (Barber Institute of Fine , Birmingham; cat. 95). Also possibly completed on Sunday 6 September are a run of smaller, briefer sketches of Spanish portraits crammed together on page 3 recto in the manner to which he had previously been accustomed with the sketchbooks.

Fig. 6.ii. Digital reconstruction by Philip Cottrell of the right-hand section of the South Wall of Saloon A in the Gallery of Ancient Masters at the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition, 1857.

6.iii. 10-17 September 1857: Jan Gossaert’s Adoration of the Magi and studies of works by Van Dyck, and the Venetian School

Scharf was back in London briefly by the end of Monday 7 September. On his return a few days later on Thursday 10, Scharf spent until the end of the week concentrating on a sequence of full-length grand European portraits, making patient one-page studies of works by Velázquez, Rembrandt and Van Dyck. These included the Don Gaspar de Guzmán on Horseback given to Velázquez, now in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (p. 8 recto; cat. 789) – it hung directly above Amorini’s Peasant Family sketched almost a week earlier - and three works that hung next to one another on the North Wall of Saloon C. Left to right, these were Rembrandt’s A Lady and Gentleman in Black lent by Henry Thomas

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Hope (1808-1862), stolen from the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum in 1990, Van Dyck’s so- called Balbi Children in the National Gallery, London (pp. 4 verso-5 recto; cats. 656 & 660; accompanied with a page of notes), and Portrait of . The latter work, now in the , New York, was lent by Lord Carlisle (p. 9 recto; cat. 662) and particularly held Scharf’s attention; he returned to make another masterly study of the head later in the sketchbook when the Art Treasures Palace was again closed to the public on Sunday 20 September (p. 40 recto). Van Dyck’s pendant portrait of the sitter’s wife, Margareta de Vos, which hung to its right belonged to Lord Warwick (cat. 663; see SSB 43, p. 129). The two works had suffered a ‘divorce’ when they were sold as separate lots at the Orleans sale in 1798, and it especially suited Scharf to reunite them at Manchester. As he had written to Lord Darnley on 12 January, “I feel particularly anxious to reassemble as many of the Orleans pictures as possible in the same gallery” (see the introduction to SSB 44). Scharf would return to this area of the hang five days later on Wednesday 16 September to sketch two grandstanding works by Claude Lorrain lent by William Cavendish, 2nd Earl of Burlington (1808-1891). These were the Landscape with Apollo and the Muses now in the National Gallery of Scotland and the Rest on the Flight into Egypt in the Cleveland Museum of Art (pp. 21 verso–22 recto; cats. 649 & 654). This completed a run of sketches of five paintings that hung in a row on the West Wall of Saloon C (erroneously catalogued as being on the North Wall).

After focussing largely on portraits over 10-11 September, Scharf then changed tack with a study of the Byzantine Icon of the Mandylion of Edessa lent by Prince Albert as cat. 8 of the Gallery of Ancient Masters (pp. 10 verso- 11 recto). This initiated a week of sketches largely devoted to religious works, mostly of the Italian and Spanish Schools; among those paintings upon which Scharf dwelt most was a triptych by Duccio also lent by Prince Albert (cat. 12). It hung directly to the right of the icon previously mentioned on the lower right-hand row of the West Wall of Saloon A. This item became a repeated object of study between 11-15 September (pp. 11 verso- 13 recto). Soon after came the multiple studies of the Agony in the Garden by Bellini previously mentioned, and Scharf devoted whole pages to Granacci’s Madonna delle Cintola from the Warwick collection - not an easy sketch as it was ‘skied’ and fairly inaccessible on the South Wall of Saloon A (p. 26 recto; cat. 147) - and two works by the Carracci (pp. 16 recto & 18 recto). The latter were Annibale’s Dead Christ Mourned now

8 in the National Gallery, London (p. 16 recto; cat. 310), which was sketched on Monday 14 September, and a Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints – a painting now given to Antonio Carracci in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (p. 18 recto; cat. 329).

Scharf then returned to a work that, somewhat inexplicably, repeatedly drew his attention throughout the sketchbooks: a pictured tentatively dubbed The Council of Trent which drew elements of its composition ultimately from a sixteenth-century fresco of that subject by Pasquale Cati da Iesi in Santa Maria in Trastevere in Rome. It was lent by the ex-industrialist Abraham Darby IV (1804-1878), but a surviving photo of it in the Witt Library of the Courtauld Institute suggests a work of indifferent quality and one that was unsound in its attribution to “Terburg” (Ter Borch) (pp. 18 verso-19 recto; cat. 524). Nevertheless, Scharf had given it a prominent place on the West Wall of Saloon B and returned to study it several times. Also of great interest to Scharf, and taking up several pages of sketches and notes compiled between 15-16 September, was an elabourately carved altarpiece lent by Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman (1802-1865) (pp. 19 verso-22 recto).

At the end of the second week covered by SSB 47, from Thursday 17-Saturday 19 September, Scharf’s interest in the Carracci and the seventeenth-century Bolognese school was reignighted by a nucleus of mainly smaller works, some of them on copper, gathered together on the lower rows at one end of the South Wall of Saloon B (pp. 20 recto, 23 verso- 24 recto & 35 recto; cats. 315-320 & 327-328 – see also the digital reconstruction at fig. 8.iv). Scharf’s sketches can now connect one of these with Luca Giordano’s Entombment in the Philbrook Museum of Art Oklahoma – then attributed to Lodovico Carracci (p. 24 recto; cat. 328). These sketches are still, however, interspersed with drawings of standout works from the North Italian and Spanish Schools. Of particular coherence are a trio of full-page sketches of sixteenth-century Venetian pastoral sacre conversazioni from the collection of Robert Stayner Holford (1808-1892) which hung next to one another in the middle of the South Wall of Saloon B (pp. 30 recto-32 recto; to them can also be added Gaudenzio Ferrari’s Virgin and Angels worshipping the Infant Saviour at p. 33 recto). Scharf seems to have been particularly taken with a Rest on the Flight into Egypt thought to be by , but now given to a skilful follower, Polidoro da Lanciano – perhaps because it was another work originally from the Orleans Collection (p. 31 recto; cat. 301). The two others were works by another imitator of Titian, Bonifacio de’ Pitati – hardly a household name today. However, in

9 his accompanying notes, Scharf singled out Bonifacio’s impressive Adoration of the Shepherds now in Birmingham City Art Gallery as “one the most brilliant Venetian pictures” in the whole exhibition (p. 30 recto; cat. 299). His sketch of another, weaker Bonifacio Virgin and Saints hanging nearby, albeit misattributed to the artist’s master Palma il Vecchio (p. 32 recto; cat. 293), allows us to now identify it with a picture in the Nasher Museum of Art, North Carolina (more of Holford’s works are recorded at pp. 10 recto, 24 recto, 36 recto & 53 recto).

Fig. 6.iii. George Scharf, Sketch of Jan Gossaert’s ‘Adoration of the Kings’ in situ at the Art Treasures Exhibition, 12 September 1857. Page 42 recto of Scharf Sketchbook 47. Heinz Archive, National Portrait Gallery, London.

Scharf’s focus on the Italian School is then tempered by more sketches of Spanish and Northern works. Among those that stand out from his activities on Friday 18 to Saturday 19 September and afterwards are precise studies of El Greco’s Portrait of a Sculptor (p. 25 recto; cat. 518) and Luis de Vargas’s Virgin and Child adored by Saints (p. 34 recto; cat. 240) from the collection of the connoisseur and Spanish art specialist, William Stirling (1818- 1878). These are just two of the prominent Spanish paintings which Scharf had not been able to study at first-hand before their arrival in Manchester. He had relied on Waagen’s survey and the owners’ expertise for his selections, and had even submitted proofs of his catalogue of the Gallery of Ancient Masters to Stirling for his approval (see also the introduction to SSB 45). One work which clearly plays a starring role in SSB 47, and which held an almost obsessive fascination for Scharf was Jan Gossaert’s Adoration of the Kings now in the National Gallery, London (cat. 436; see also fig. 6.iii). This was another item from the Carlisle collection which had been accepted on the basis of its reputation. Scharf immersed himself in a study of its meticulously rendered detail and vivid pigments – in

10 order to record the latter he made a painstakingly annotated ‘painting-by-numbers’ sketch on 20-21 September (41 verso-42 recto). Scharf returned to study particular details again and again over the next few days, but disregarded works of the same school and period which hung in close proximity on the North Wall of Saloon A (pp. 47 verso–48 recto, 50 recto, 51 recto, 52 recto, & 53 verso–54 recto).13

The works of Rembrandt and his pupils also repeatedly caught Scharf’s eye, particularly Lord Scarsdale’s Daniel before Nebuchadnezzar which is still at Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire. Scharf had previously assured Scarsdale that “the famous Daniel by Rembrandt [is] a most important acquisition” in a letter of 13 March, having keenly pursued it along with other pictures from Kedleston throughout the earlier part of the year.14 As revealed in a letter to Waagen on 17 March (see the introduction to SSB 46), its presence at Manchester, along with all other loans from Kedleston, was down to the death of Nathaniel Curzon, 3rd Baron Scarsdale, the previous November.15 The latter had flatly refused to lend, but his successor and nephew, Alfred Curzon, 4th Baron Scarsdale (1831-1916), had proved to be immediately more sympathetic. Although officially down as Rembrandt, in his catalogue Scharf acknowledged the fact that Waagen had already re-attributed the Daniel to Salomon Koninck – an identification that endures today. Despite its more atmospheric technique, Scharf was possibly drawn to it for reasons analogous to the Gossaert Adoration and also some of the smaller Bolognese works on copper sketched between 17 and 19 September (see above) - a highly finessed handling, and meticulous attention to detail which in this case was exemplative of the ‘fijnshilder’ technique of some of Rembrandt’s followers. Scharf once again appended a chromatic analysis to his sketch made on Sunday 20 September (pp. 38 verso–39 recto) when the Art Treasures Palace was once again devoid of the usual hubbub. In contrast to the linear technique of this and other sketches in SSB 47, three days later Scharf made an impressively florid chiaroscuro-heavy study of Rembrandt’s Christ and St Mary Magdalen at the Tomb from the (p. 56 recto; cat. 842). Almost a week later, on Saturday 26 September, he also devoted an opening of the sketchbook to a

13 For a discussion of the critical reaction to this work on its appearance at Manchester see also Pergam, 2011, pp. 163-165. 14 MCL M6/2/6/2/66-67. 15 MCL M6/2/6/2/112-116.

11 comparative study of two Philips Koninck landscapes from the Grenfell and Overstone collections, one of which, The Approaching Storm (cat. 698), was then, however, given to Rembrandt (pp. 58-59) – the latter is now on loan to the National Galleries of Scotland.

As if attempting to draw his mind back to his new duties as Secretary to the National Portrait Gallery, from 21 September and throughout the final week covered by SSB 47 Scharf began to increasingly apply his pencil toward items from the British Portrait Gallery. He made sketches of two Stuart portraits hanging next to each other (South Wall, back of Saloon B – erroneously catalogued as Back of Saloon C): William Dobson’s Portrait of Sir Charles Cottrell Embraced by Dobson, and Sir Balthazar Gerbier and Van Dyck’s Portrait of Sir William Killigrew (now in Tate Britain)(pp. 46 verso-recto; BPG cats. 105 & 106). The former was lent by Algernon Percy, 4th Duke of Northumberland (1792-1865), and is still at Alnwick Castle – another collection which Scharf had not been able to reach during his wanderings around the country. At this point, it was as if Scharf was seeking a seamless transition from the examples of continental painting in the grand manner which had thus far dominated his activities. But by 26 September and with the completion of the sketchbook, this had developed into a more intensive engagement with sitter-led portraits of the Tudor and Stuart periods. Notable items include Dirck Stoop’s Portrait of Queen Catherine of Braganza (p. 66 recto; BPG, cat. 215) exhibited, however, as by Peter Lely. It was lent by Henry Dillon, 14th Viscount Dillon (1810 -1865) and was the only British portrait in SSB 47 actually destined for the National Portrait Gallery. Given that Scharf would later emerge as an expert on portraits of Mary Queen of Scots, he made a disappointingly brief study of the head and shoulders of a full-length portrait likeness of this sitter which came from the collection of the eccentric William John Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck, 5th Duke of Portland (1800-1879) at Welbeck Abbey (p. 63 recto; BPG, cat. 25).16 The latter’s collection of miniatures would, however, feature heavily in the subsequent sketchbook, SSB 48.

16 On Scharf’s interest in portraits of Mary Queen of Scots see Heath, 2018, pp. 11-12 & 32-33.

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