Introduction to SSB 44 (13 October 1856–13 January 1857) by Philip Cottrell NB. All page references are to SSB 44 and catalogue numbers refer to items from the Art Treasures Exhibition’s Gallery of Ancient Masters unless otherwise specified. At the very start of SSB 44 there are a few isolated notes on a lunar eclipse that Scharf observed at a quarter-to-midnight on Monday 13 October on exiting Euston Station, London (p. 1; other entries scattered across Scharf’s sketchbooks and diaries reveal that stargazing was something of a minor hobby). He had returned briefly from Manchester to visit his mother and aunt at the new house they now shared at Eastcott Place, Camden Town, before embarking for Earl Spencer’s collection at Althorp on the following Wednesday (and then on to a series of other collectors – see the introduction to SSB 43). Apart from these initial notes, SSB 44 is almost wholly devoted to Scharf’s survey of British art collections, encompassing twenty-five further appointments across twenty-two lenders over a three- month period between 26 October 1856 to 13 January 1857. Disregarding numerous works which were not selected by Scharf, around one-hundred-and-seventy Art Treasures items are represented, of which one-hundred-and-twenty-seven were Ancient Masters. There is a major chronological overlap with regard to the subsequent sketchbook, SSB 45, which Scharf began using intermittently from early November, and then regularly from mid- January to mid-February 1857. 3.i. October-November 1856: lenders in London and the Midlands Most of the material in the opening pages of SSB 44 covers Scharf’s two-day visit to Knowsley Hall, near Liverpool, the seat of Edward Geoffrey Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby (1799-1869), which began on Sunday 26 October (pp. 1-6).1 Among the works sketched by Scharf, surprisingly short shrift is given to Rembrandt’s Belshazzar’s Feast (p. 3; cat. 695) now in the National Gallery, London. While this anticipates the poor critical attention it received at Manchester, all the Knowsley sketches seem somewhat half-hearted and unusually brisk. It is as if Scharf was working at undue speed, was distracted or, as on other occasions, the lighting was poor and the pictures hard to view (see for example, his visit to 1 This visit is also covered in LB I, pp. 58-62. 1 Newnham Paddox on 3 November).2 It is perhaps unsurprising then, that ten days after leaving Knowsley, Scharf wrote to the Earl to say that a return visit might be necessary, “for the purpose of making rough sketches to scale of the pictures we have selected”.3 Scharf’s pressing schedule, however, forced him to abandon this plan in a letter of 20 February 1857.4 In other respects, Scharf got on well at Knowsley and seven years later, in 1864, the Earl commissioned him to produce a catalogue of its pictures.5 A couple of further works sketched on page 6 are from the collection of a Dr Babington at an unidentified location - a crossed-out note in the first of Scharf’s ‘long books’, may suggest that this visit took place around or on Tuesday 28 October.6 Scharf possibly returned to his Manchester lodgings at Windsor Terrace, Old Trafford, on the evening of Monday 27 October, but then travelled to London for a few days. The pretext was an audience with the Art Treasures’ royal patron, Prince Albert, at Windsor Castle on Wednesday 29 October for which a special train was laid on for him.7 Scharf’s appointment with the Prince was to discuss the Exhibition’s progress and how it would benefit from a substantial number of loans from the royal palaces and the Prince’s own personal collection. At this point, Scharf’s plan was to survey dozens of other lenders living in and around the capital, alongside making further excursions to owners in the Midlands and Southwest of England. As a result, he could now take up residence again, albeit intermittently, at Eastcott Place, alongside his mother, Elizabeth and her sister, Scharf’s doting spinster aunt, Mary Hicks (1774-1864). The three of them enjoyed a close, mutually supportive relationship (in contrast to Scharf’s fractious attitude to his father, who was now living separately at a nearby address – see the introductions to SSB 43 & 46), and the prospect of a temporary return to London must have been an attractive one. Ever industrious, even before his interview with the Prince, Scharf had squeezed in another lender’s visit, to the philanthropist Angela Burdett Coutts at 65 Lowndes Square, Belgravia, on the day of his 2 See the commentary to SSB 44, pp. 3-4. 3 5 November 1856 - MCL M6/2/6/1/92. 4 MCL M6/2/6/1/251-252. 5 See the commentary to SSB 44, pp. 1-2. 6 LB I, p. 62. 7 Scharf’s diary for the day records, “To Windsor, interview with Prince Albert. Special train” - NPG7/3/1/12. 2 return to London, Tuesday 28 October, although the results of this visit are not recorded in SSB 44.8 The latter does reveal, however, that a day later, on Wednesday 29 October, Scharf visited Emily Frances Smith, Duchess of Beaufort (1800-1899) (pp. 9-12) – presumably at her London residence at 22 Arlington Street, near to the house kept by one of the Art Treasures’ most important lenders, Lord Yarborough (see also below). The following day, Thursday 30 October, Scharf found himself at 2 Eaton Square, the home of G. E. H. Vernon (pp. 1-2 & 7– 14) which housed a creditable collection of central-Italian works. The previous week, Vernon had written to advise that: My little house in Eaton Square…is in a very packed up condition and…the pictures are in paper. But I shall be most happy to allow Mr Scharf to examine them. And I also particularly beg that he will not scruple for an instant to make the housemaid remove the paper from any frame where it may interfere with the picture. I am happy for Mr Scharf’s sake to say that probably ¾ of an hour will be ample time for him to exercise his judgement as to the merit of the pictures. 9 Although Scharf was the best judge of his own time, such advice may well have been useful; one of the grumbles repeatedly expressed in his letters to lenders was that he could never be sure how long each visit would take him, and this sometimes frustrated attempts to build up a clear itinerary.10 Among the sketches related to this visit, which are somewhat haphazardly intermingled with works from other collections, is a Granacci Holy Family (p. 7; cat. 75) the composition of which disqualifies it from being an item in the Honolulu Museum of Art, Hawaii, as previously thought. Now Scharf had himself been vetted and inspected by Prince Albert, he was at last granted access to Buckingham Palace on Friday 31 October in order to make extensive sketches of works in the Royal Collection, the majority of them from the Dutch and Flemish schools. Sketches of these consume most of pages 11-23 of SSB 44. On Saturday 1 November, Scharf then left the capital for the day to visit the collection of John Stuart Bligh, 6th Earl of Darnley (1827-1896), at Cobham Hall, Kent (pp. 25-32). This yielded loans of some of the most celebrated pictures of the Venetian school to appear at Manchester, including Titian’s Man 8 See LB I, p. 63 9 MCL M6/2/11/406. 10 See for example his letter to Mrs L. Dawson of 17 February 1857 - MCL M6/2/6/2/223, and also the letter he wrote to his mother on Friday 13 February discussed in the introduction to SSB 45. 3 with a Blue Sleeve (p. 26; cat. 257) and several others which are also now in the National Gallery in London and which had previously come from the Orleans collection. Also among these were Tintoretto’s Origins of the Milky Way (p. 31; cat. 580) and Veronese’s four Allegories of Love (pp. 30 & 32; cats. 285-8; although Scharf omitted to sketch the third picture in the cycle, Scorn). To this group may be added one of Titian’s superlative poesie for Philip II of Spain, The Rape of Europa (p. 29; cat. 259) now in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The quality and provenance of these items must have proved extremely gratifying given that, as Scharf declared in a letter to Darnley of 12 January 1857, he was “particularly anxious to reassemble as many of the Orleans pictures as possible in the same gallery”. In the same letter he thanked the Earl for the extent of his generosity which had been such that he felt it “would be impossible to ask for one picture more”. Nevertheless, Scharf then supplies a list of artists whose works he wished he could still obtain from Darnley: Annibale Carracci, Francesco Albani and Salvator Rosa among others. If one counts the Toilet of Venus sketched on page 26, which was then given to Annibale, all the artists named are represented in the run of sketches arising from his earlier visit to Cobham. Of the last artist on his wish list Scharf writes, “we are still very poor in really authentic and good specimens of Salvator Rosa. Examples with his name are numerous in England; but they are at the same time, neither genuine nor characteristic.