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Paul Sandby’s young pupil identified

by RICHARD GREEN

ONE OF THE best-known and most attractive works in the extensive collection of drawings by in the Royal Library at , apart from topographical views of the Castle and , is the watercolour hitherto titled A lady painting (Fig.2).1 Exactly how and when this entered the library is not certain, but it is first recorded in a group of Sandby drawings lent from Windsor to the Royal Academy’s great exhi- bition of British art in 1934.2 Since then it has regularly featured in the Sandby literature and in exhibitions, most recently being included in the monographic show held in 2009–10.3 While the watercolour has generally been dated to the 1760s on the basis 1. A lady copy- of comparison with other works by the artist and of costume, the ing at a drawing table, here sitter has remained unidentified. Closely related is a drawing by identified as Sandby in red and black chalk of exactly the same size at the Yale Rhoda Center for British Art, New Haven (Fig.1).4 This depicts the same Delaval, by Paul Sandby. young woman in a similar setting, although from a viewpoint c.1763–64. further to the left, working at the same table but, rather than Red and black painting, using a porte-crayon to copy a print or drawing of a chalk and stump on head mounted in front of her, perhaps on a vertical flap projecting wove paper, from her angled worktop. This drawing has also been dated to the 19.4 by 15.2 1760s, but again no attempt has been made to identify the sitter.5 cm. (Yale Center for And if, as seems likely, both the Windsor watercolour and the British Art, New Haven drawing remained in the artist’s possession until his New Haven). death, we cannot hope for early provenance clues to guide us to her identity.6 Although there are critical, even conflicting, chalk drawing, we see that the lower sash of the window behind differences between these two works – which will be addressed her (which would have been subdivided by glazing bars holding below – they will initially be scrutinised in tandem. small panes) has been fully raised. While, incidentally, indicating An important but little documented aspect of Sandby’s career that the time of year is summer, as does the lightweight character was his activity as a drawing master. Probably instructing the sons of the sitter’s clothing and her bergère hat, the open window offers of George III,7 and certainly members of the Greville, Harcourt, a valuable clue to the location of the room. The view we glimpse Williams Wynn and other noble or landed families, he clearly through it – in the watercolour – was first identified by the operated at the top end of this particular market. In the two present writer in 2009.8 In 1947 Paul Oppé described this as being closely related works under discussion there can be little doubt that ‘over a river to houses’, while more recent commentators have Sandby has recorded one of his pupils – the young daughter of a seen the latter as ‘warehouse-type buildings’ or ‘a castle’.9 In fact wealthy family. The scale of the window behind her suggests a the view is across the Thames in , from to Lam- room of generous proportions. She sits at an ingenious painting beth Palace, with Archbishop Morton’s gatehouse seen sideways table with sliding trays, containing shells of colours, which can be on, the lantern on the roof of the great hall to the left of it and the pulled out for work in watercolours or left partly closed for draw- turreted tower of St Mary’s (the former parish church of Lambeth, ing; a palette for mixing colours attached to one of the front legs now the Garden Museum) to the right. Although these medieval may be swivelled in or out according to the activity. Probably, buildings are partly obscured by trees today, their distinctive with the trays fully closed and the adjustable top laid flat, this piece configuration remains unchanged (Figs.3 and 4). of furniture functioned as a card table or something similar. All of The most likely candidate for consideration as a sizeable house this confirms that the young pupil is on home territory, rather than on the river bank almost opposite Lambeth Palace where Paul in Sandby’s studio. More clearly in the watercolour than in the Sandby might have been employed in the 1760s to instruct the

I am indebted to James Birch for information about pictures at Doddington Hall, to 3 See J. Bonehill and S. Daniels, eds.: exh. cat. Paul Sandby: Picturing Britain, Hugh Dixon for insightful comments based on his extensive knowledge of the Nottingham (Castle Museum and Art Gallery) and elsewhere 2009–10, p.172, no.66, Delavals, and to Aileen Ribeiro, whose advice on costume has been crucial to my as A lady drawing. argument. Grateful thanks are offered to them, and for help received from Michelle 4 B1975.4.1881. The meaning of the letter ‘F’ inscribed on this drawing (lower Goodman, Julie Hawthorn, Paul Lewis, Kate Phillips and Jane Roberts, and to the right) and on others by Paul Sandby is not known. staff of the Northumberland Archives. 5 Sandby’s chalk drawing has been included in several exhibitions at the Yale 1 Also called A young lady painting; RL14377; see A.P. Oppé: The Drawings of Paul Center for British Art since 1977. See for example [B. Robertson]: exh. cat. The Art and in the Collection of His Majesty the King at Windsor Castle, Oxford of Paul Sandby, New Haven (Yale Center for British Art) 1985, p.53, no.69. and London 1947, p.65, no.259. 6 For the provenance of the Sandby drawings in the Royal Library, see Oppé, op. cit. 2 [W.G. Constable and C. Johnson, eds.]: Commemorative Catalogue of the Exhibition (note 1), pp.1–4; and J. Roberts: exh. cat. Views of Windsor: Watercolours by Thomas of British Art, , London, January–March 1934, London 1935, p.150, and Paul Sandby from the Collection of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, no.601, as A lady painting a miniature. (Rijksmuseum) and elsewhere 1995–97, pp.136–38. Only a minute proportion of the

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2. A lady painting, here identified as Rhoda Delaval (1751–70), by Paul Sandby. c.1763–64. Watercolour over graphite, 19.5 by 15.2 cm. (Royal Collection, London).

daughter or daughters of a wealthy family is the old Grosvenor A substantial red-brick house of two main storeys, it was set back House.10 Formerly known as Peterborough House, it appears as from the river by a garden and was skirted by a public pathway. It Belgrave House on Richard Horwood’s London map of 1792–99 stood until 1809 when it was demolished, having been vacated by at the very end of Millbank Row, a continuation of Millbank the Grosvenors, presumably in the light of proposals for the build- Street, and marked the then southern extremity of the city. Of ing of what was eventually to be the Millbank Penitentiary on seventeenth-century origin, but extensively remodelled in the land to the south. A painting by Daniel Turner, probably dating early 1730s, it had passed from Alexander Davies into the from just before its demolition, strikingly illustrates the relation- Grosvenor family through the marriage of his daughter Mary in ship of Grosvenor House, seen obliquely on its extreme left, to 1677, at the age of twelve, to Sir Thomas Grosvenor, 3rd Baronet. Lambeth Palace in the distance, on the right (Fig.5). A less oblique

Sandby drawings at Windsor can be connected with royal commissions from the artist 7 Anon.: ‘Paul Sandby’, Arnold’s Magazine of the Fine Arts 1 (1833), p.434; see also and none was commissioned by George III, so there is no reason to believe that the K. Sloan: exh. cat. ‘A Noble Art’: Amateur Artists and Drawing Masters c.1600–1800, work under discussion depicts a member of the royal family. Most of the Windsor London () 2000, p.140. figure studies came from the posthumous Paul Sandby sales – either direct, as in the 8 See R. Green: review of Paul Sandby exhibition, THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 151 case of the Prince Regent’s purchases from that of 1811, or indirectly. The New (2009), p.790. Haven drawing was sold from the collection of drawings by Paul and Thomas Sandby 9 Respectively, Oppé, op. cit. (note 1), p.65; Sloan, op. cit. (note 7), p.232; and ‘formed by William Sandby’ (great-grandson of Paul’s brother Thomas), and left G. Waterfield: ‘The scenic route’, RA Magazine 106 (Spring 2010), p.51. by him to his cousin G.T.A. Peake, father of Hubert Peake, the vendor, Christie’s, 10 For old Grosvenor House, see F.H.W. Sheppard, ed.: Survey of London, XXXIX London (in the first of two sales), 24th March 1959 (lot 113), bought by Agnew’s, (The Grosvenor Estate in , Part 1 [General History]), London 1977, pp.3, 4, London, from whom purchased by Paul Mellon in 1960. Many of the drawings had 7, 21, 36 (note) and 43; and XL (The Grosvenor Estate in Mayfair, Part 2 [The passed to William Sandby by family descent, but others came from various sources. Buildings]), London 1980, pp.240 and 242.

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view of the house, in watercolour, by George Shepherd is dated Rhoda – if we assume she was portrayed by Sandby in around 1809 (Fig.6), while fully frontal views are provided by an unat- 1763 or 1764, when she would have been twelve or thirteen years tributed watercolour perhaps of c.1810 (London Metropolitan old. Although the leading strings do not appear in the New Haven Archives) and an etching by Thomas Dale after Thomas Hosmer drawing, Ribeiro comments that ‘the back of the dress has a Shepherd, dated 1821. All three of these corroborate the evidence reinforced bodice, possibly to help with either a slight deformity of Turner’s painting, presenting the house’s river façade in more or [. . .] deportment’.18 There is no evidence that Rhoda was detail, including its balcony at first-floor level with iron railings. deformed, but an aid to deportment would not seem inapprop riate Curiously, however, in the Shepherd watercolour alone the first- for a young woman of twelve or thirteen at that time. floor windows do not reach down to the level of the balcony Rhoda, John Delaval’s first daughter, was born on 18th Feb - to allow easy access to it, although they do fall below the top of ruary 1751 at Seaton Delaval and died, aged only nineteen and the railings. There seems to be a correspondence in this with probably of consumption, on 7th August 1770 at Doddington, the window in the New Haven drawing, but not that in the where she was buried in the churchyard. Very little evidence of Windsor watercolour, although in the latter Sandby has taken her brief life survives, apart from a handful of letters among the pains to record the red brickwork to the left of the opening. Delaval papers in the Northumberland Archives. This includes The old Grosvenor House was the principal London residence dutiful missives in an elegant hand addressed to her parents. One of the Grosvenor family from 1719 to 1755. Thereafter, however, of them written in French (at the age of eight) to her mother and it was leased to John Delaval (1728–1808) of the famous Northum- correspondence in Italian with her tutor at the British Museum berland land-owning family which had seats in that county at Ford demonstrate proficiency in foreign languages.19 Rhoda was the and Seaton Delaval, as well as at Doddington in Lincolnshire, and third member of the family to bear this first name. Her paternal had acquired new wealth from coal-mining, salt-production and grandmother was Rhoda Apreece, who had brought Doddington bottle-making in Seaton Delaval and nearby Hartley.11 While tak- Hall into the family through her marriage to Captain Francis Blake ing the lead in developing these industries, Delaval was elected Delaval. Their eldest daughter (John’s sister) was the second Member of Parliament for Berwick from 1754 to 1761, from 1765 Rhoda, who married Edward Astley and was an amateur artist of to 1768 and again from 1780 to 1786, and Grosvenor House would considerable standing, having taken lessons from Arthur Pond, have been extremely convenient for the .12 starting in 1744.20 Her artistic practice will undoubtedly have set He adopted the middle name Hussey in 1759 on succeeding to the an example for her nieces, including the third Rhoda. Moreover, Doddington estate, was created a baronet in 1761 and elevated to it is perhaps not too far-fetched to speculate that the painting table the peerage as Baron Delaval in 1783.13 Robert Wilkinson record- seen in the two Sandbys under discussion passed from her to these ed in or around 1819 that after 1755 Grosvenor House was ‘inhab- nieces on her untimely death probably following childbirth in ited by Lord Delaval and Mr. Symmons’.14 Joshua Reynolds, in 1757. While it was common practice for members of wealthy fam- his pocketbooks, noted Sir John Hussey Delaval’s address in the ilies in the eighteenth century to be instructed in the polite art week beginning 2nd April 1764 as Grosvenor House, Millbank;15 of drawing by teachers such as Sandby, Rhoda Astley exemplifies while the Delaval papers held at the Northumberland Archives a particularly strong tradition of artistic activity in the Delaval fam- include a visitors’ book for Grosvenor House kept by Lady Hussey ily. Her younger brother George was actually apprenticed to train Delaval in 1769 and letters written by her daughters Sophia Ann under Pond, for £300, in 1754,21 while her younger sister Anne and Elizabeth from that address in 1770 and 1771.16 Hussey Delaval, later Lady Stanhope, was portrayed full-length If we accept that the setting of Sandby’s watercolour and chalk by Reynolds in 1763–64 (Baltimore Museum of Art), holding a drawing is a room in the old Grosvenor House during the years it porte-crayon and surrounded by other accoutrements of an artist.22 was leased to John Delaval, it follows that the sitter who appears In order to conclude the argument we need to return to the in both is almost certainly one of his five daughters, all by his discrepancies between the Windsor watercolour and the New first wife, the widowed Susanna Potter, née Robinson, whom Haven drawing, which have thus far become apparent, hoping to he had married in 1750 – namely, Rhoda (1751–70), Sophia Ann find a way of reconciling them. The major difference concerns (1755–93), Elizabeth (1757–85), Frances (1759–1839) and Sarah the background. In the chalk drawing, the window opening falls Hussey (1763–1800). In determining which, it is necessary to con- considerably lower than in the watercolour – not fully to the floor, sider the evidence of the sitter’s costume, datable to around 1760. but nevertheless indicating that it probably gave access to a balcony, A vital clue is provided in the watercolour by the leading strings thus locating the scene on the first floor (or at least an upper floor) falling from the top of the sitter’s dress down her back, as recently of the house and tying in with George Shepherd’s view. By con- noted by Aileen Ribeiro.17 Leading strings were narrow strips of trast, the window in Sandby’s watercolour could not possibly give fabric with the practical purpose of supporting or restraining a access to a balcony, its lower edge being more or less at waist height. child learning to walk but ‘were retained in female dress until Perhaps the scene has been moved to a downstairs room. A more about the mid-teens’ as a decorative conceit. Of the five Delaval sustainable hypothesis, however, taking into account other differ- daughters the only one who can be reasonably matched both with ences, is that in the watercolour Sandby has created an enhanced these determinants and with the apparent age of the subject is and more considered version of the chalk drawing, involving a

11 For the Delavals, see F. Askham (pseudonym of J.E.C. Greenwood): The Gay occupied the house concurrently, then the latter was presumably John Symmons of Delavals, London 1955; and M. Green: The Delavals: A Family History, 2nd ed., Lanstinan, Pembrokeshire, Member of Parliament for Cardiganshire from 1746 to Newcastle upon Tyne 2010. 1761. In any case, it would seem to be his elder son, also John Symmons, who wrote 12 John’s younger brother Edward Delaval (1729–1814), a natural philosopher, had a to his mother from Grosvenor House on 14th November 1785; see F. Jones: ‘Some very oblique view of Lambeth Palace, looking upstream, from the riverside terrace of Slebech Notes’, National Library of Wales Journal 7, part 3 (Summer 1952), p.203. his ‘neat Gothic house in Parliament Place’, immediately adjacent to the Houses of 15 D. Mannings and M. Postle: Sir Joshua Reynolds: A Complete Catalogue of his Parliament. This is recorded in an unattributed painting of c.1810 at Doddington Hall. Paintings, New Haven and London 2000, I, p.165, under no.503. 13 In the Irish peerage; a barony in the peerage of Great Britain followed in 1786. 16 Ashington, Northumberland Archives, 2/DE/43/13 (the visitors’ book, unlocated 14 R.Wilkinson: Londina Illustrata, I, London 1819, p.171. If Delaval and Symmons at the time of writing); 2/DE/39/3/2–7 and 13; and 2/DE/39/6/1–4. The 1st Earl

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3. Photograph of Lambeth Palace and the former church of St Mary’s. 4. Detail of Fig.2. (Photograph by the author).

5. Lambeth Palace from Millbank, by Daniel Turner. c.1808. Canvas, 41.3 by 60 6. Peterborough House, later Grosvenor House, Millbank, by George Shepherd. 1809. cm. (Museum of London). Watercolour over graphite with pen and black ink, 18.6 by 28 cm. (City of London, London Metropolitan Archives).

degree of invention. The painting table has been refined, for exam- Sandby’s initial, ad vivum response to the subject, whereas the ple, by making the legs more slender, and the implied stool of the Windsor watercolour was an elaborated version intended for sale or sitter, concealed by her skirt, converted to a chair. Her costume has presentation to his presumed patron, the sitter’s father. been elaborated not only by the leading strings referred to above For several reasons, the argument offered here cannot be but also by a generous frill to the apron, thus promoting the latter absolutely conclusive. There is no reference to any of the from a protective garment to something both practical and decora- Delavals in the literature on the artist, while there seems to be tive. The room has been furnished with a rug and a somewhat nothing in the Delaval papers in the Northumberland Archives notional checked curtain (suspiciously like those, and chair covers documenting payments to Paul Sandby. Moreover, despite the of the same fabric, which appear in Sandby’s drawings of subjects undeniable resemblance of Sandby’s subject to members of the set in the artist’s own house).23 Not least, the watercolour has been Delaval family, there is no certain portrait of Rhoda Delaval with finished by including the view across the river to Lambeth Palace – which the two works under discussion might be compared.24 to allow for which Sandby needed to eliminate any balcony railings Because of her early death in 1770 she narrowly missed featuring which might have impeded the prospect – and the normalised win- in the series of full-lengths that Sir John commissioned of dow provides an effective frame for this. The glimpse of Lambeth himself and his family from the Newcastle upon Tyne artist Palace is slightly less oblique than a viewpoint at Grosvenor House William Bell from 1770 onwards, remaining at Seaton Delaval.25 might have afforded, but this view could well have been taken, Nevertheless, it is hoped that the facts of the matter, as independently, from a position more directly opposite – for the presented here, will be persuasive. The name of Delaval would sake of clarity – or indeed from an existing print or drawing. The be a significant addition to the existing, very short list of known corollary of this hypothesis is that the New Haven drawing was patrons of Paul Sandby as a drawing master.

of Grosvenor bought back the lease on Grosvenor House in 1789, by which time the 22 Mannings and Postle, op. cit. (note 15), I, pp.430–31, no.1689; and II, pl.759. then Lord Delaval’s London home was in Portland Place. 23 Oppé, op. cit. (note 1), pls.123, 124 and 129; and E.H. Ramsden: ‘The Sandby 17 Private communication with the author, 30th August 2011. Brothers in London’, THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 89 (1947), p.19, pl.A. 18 Ditto, 1st September 2011. 24 The closest contender is an unattributed half-length portrait of a girl at Doddington 19 Ashington, Northumberland Archives, 2/DE/39/3/1; and NRO 429/18/20–25. Hall. Although she holds a rose, or roses, which may allude to the name Rhoda, there 20 L. Lippincott: ‘Arthur Pond’s Journal of Receipts and Expenses, 1734–1750’, is no certainty about the identity of the sitter. Walpole Society 54 (1988), pp.260 ff. 25 William Bell, who probably taught Sir John’s children drawing when they were in 21 Idem: Selling Art in Georgian London: The Rise of Arthur Pond, New Haven and Northumberland, exhibited two views of Seaton Delaval at the Royal Academy in London 1983, pp.42 and 96. 1775, giving his address as ‘At Sir John Delaval’s’, presumably Grosvenor House.

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