The Sir George Scharf Sketchbooks

2. Introduction to SSB 43 (14 June–20 October 1856) by Philip Cottrell, University College Dublin

NB. All page references are to SSB 43 and catalogue numbers refer to items from the Art Treasures Exhibition’s Gallery of Ancient Masters unless otherwise specified.

Scharf Sketchbook 43 covers the period from mid-June to late October 1856. Around forty Art Treasures items are represented, in addition to dozens of other miscellaneous works of art. As with most of the sketchbooks, Scharf assembled its content in a reasonably regular and chronological manner, although some pages have been removed, a couple have been left blank (pp. 134-135), and there are a few gaps in its compilation. These include an unusually long seven-week hiatus which lasted from early August to the end of September which coincided with a convulsive turn of events in Scharf’s personal and professional life. Not least of these was his appointment, at the age of thirty-five, as Art Secretary to the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition on 8 August. The first two thirds of SSB 43, up to page 86, predate this crucial moment, and are largely devoted to a visit to Cambridge between Saturday 28 June and Wednesday 2 July followed by a two-week tour of Edinburgh and the Scottish Borders which began on 21 July.1 The sketchbook then picks up again in late September, at which point Scharf’s new duties had entailed his removal from to lodgings in Manchester, and thus began the first of Scharf’s several lengthy stints in the city, often of several weeks’ duration. His countrywide survey of around hundred-and-fifty prominent art collections began on Monday 29 September. Curiously, however, his very first lender visit, to George Warren, 2nd Lord de Tabley, of Tabley Hall, Cheshire, is not recorded in SSB 43. Warren was already an avid of the exhibition and perhaps his loans were a settled matter. Instead, the sketchbook’s record of Scharf’s survey commences later that day with his second appointment, involving pictures belonging to James Hugh Smith Barry at Marbury Hall, near Northwich. Six more visits are recorded before SSB 43 draws to a close on 20 October.

1 Among the entries in Scharf’s diary for the intervening period is one for the 14 June which has the note, “Dined at ‘our club’…I tasted Strychnine” - NPG7/3/1/12.

1

The following review of SSB 43 places its content within the context of events in Scharf’s professional and private life. It is also helpful to summarise the state of Scharf’s career during the first half of 1856, the period leading up to the point at which SSB 43 begins. This acts as a guide to the varied range of Scharf’s activities and institutional and professional affiliations prior to his appointment as Art Secretary to the Art Treasures Exhibition.

2.i. The state of Scharf’s career in the first half of 1856

Scharf had a busy start to the year, preparing and delivering a course of twenty fine art lectures at the ‘studio’ he kept in his family home at Torrington Square, Bloomsbury. He lived here with his father, the German émigré printmaker George Johann Scharf (1788- 1860), mother, Elizabeth (1785-1869), and spinster aunt (his mother’s sister), Mary Hicks; 1774-1864) (Scharf’s younger brother, Henry, had emigrated to America by 1853 where he pursued a struggling career as an actor).2 In his journal, Scharf’s father records that the lectures were delivered “to ladies only, three times a week from 7th February to Thursday 20th March”, and supplied further details of a curriculum that reveals the impressive range of his son’s expertise: “ancient art and its monuments: sculpture, painting, architecture, coins, vases and palaeography, anatomy, drapery and the art of design, from the earliest period to the 17thc…it is to be regretted that they were not well attended.”3

Despite this, Scharf was much occupied with two other far more successful projects. By coincidence, these debuted in London on the same day, Monday 28 April. The first concerned the start of the eighteen-day sale of the extensive art collection of the late poet and connoisseur, Samuel Rogers (1763-1855), at Christie’s, for which Scharf had arranged the catalogue. The second involved the opening night of Charles Kean’s (1811-1868) elaborately-staged production of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale at the Princess’s Theatre, Oxford Street. Scharf had assisted Kean in the design of sets and costumes which sought to render the play’s classical setting with unprecedented, archaeological accuracy. The staging included a painstaking recreation of the Temple of Minerva at Syracuse, and in this and other aspects of the production Scharf’s background in illustrating and recording ancient monuments proved invaluable. His involvement with the costumes even drew the attention

2 Henry Scharf (1822-1887). 3 NPG7/3/7/2/1/14 - 7 February 1856.

2 of the Pre-Raphaelite painter William Holman Hunt (1827-1910) who corresponded with Scharf on the subject that autumn.4 The production was an enormous success (featuring also the debut of the juvenile Ellen Terry), and this time Scharf’s father was able to gush that, “the play had more than a hundred nights run, and deserved it, being splendidly got up, such as I never saw, although I saw some of the finest plays ever acted, in Munich, Paris and London”.5 The production’s donnish purism was, however, memorably lampooned by Punch on 10 May:

Mr Punch has it upon authority to state that the Bear at present running in Oxford Street in the Winter’s Tale is an archaeological copy from the original bear of Noah's Ark. Anything more modern would have been at variance with the ancient traditions reproduced in the drama.6

Notwithstanding the meagre attendance at his Torrington Square classes, Scharf found himself in increasing demand as a lecturer in fine art and art history. From 20 May, he began teaching a course of weekly Saturday lectures at Queen’s College London, and these would be repeated the following year (see the introduction to SSB 46). In addition to giving lectures in Leeds and Oxford, he was also invited to speak at the Archaeological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (later the Royal Archaeological Institute), of which he was an active and prominent member, on 12 May.7 The Institute helped to subsidise his fortnight-long excursion to Edinburgh and the Scottish Borders between 21 July and 6 August (see below).

2.ii. June-August 1856: tours of Cambridge and Scotland

The first seventeen pages of SSB 43 contain notes and sketches largely relevant to Scharf’s visit to Cambridge between Saturday 28 June and Wednesday 2 July 1856. The material here records Scharf’s responses to the stained-glass window at King’s College (pp. 1-5), the Pashley Sarcophagus at the Fitzwilliam Museum (p. 9), and a scholarly publication he consulted on Roman church mosaics (pp. 6-11 & 16-17) in one of the city’s academic libraries.8 Overlapping this material, between pages 12-15 and 18-85, is a lengthier

4 See, for example, the letters from Holman Hunt on 22 November and 2 December 1856 - NPG 7/2/2/1. 5 NPG7/3/7/2/1/14 - general notes relevant to May 1856. 6 Punch, vol. 130, 10 May 1856, p. 90. See also Cottrell, 2021, pp. 79-80. 7 NPG7/3/7/4/1/1 - 12 May 1856. On the range of Scharf’s activities during this period see also the end-of-year summary he wrote at the conclusion of his 1856 appointments diary – discussed in the introduction to SSB 44. 8 Probably Giovanni Giustino Ciampini, Vetera Monimenta, 2 vols., Rome, 1690 – 1699. The exact dates of the trip to Cambridge can be ascertained with recourse to various entries in the diary of Scharf’s aunt -

3 sequence of sketches arising from a two-week tour of Edinburgh and the Scottish Borders which began in late July (but see also pp. 136-137 for preliminary notes on works in Scottish collections compiled on 14 June). This trip was in connection with his membership of the Archaeological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. Their annual meeting was held in Edinburgh on Tuesday 22 July, and in order to attend it Scharf caught the 8.45pm night train from London on the previous evening.9 He then settled into digs at 118 Princes Street (now a branch of the building society HSBC) which had “a fine view of [Edinburgh Castle] from his window”.10 Sketches in SSB 43 made on 1 and 5 August also attest to its grandstanding location (pp. 64-75).

Further drawings reveal that Scharf abandoned the city for extended excursions to Abbotsford, the former home of Sir Walter Scott, Dryburgh and Melrose Abbey on 24 July (pp. 18-25), and to Roslin and the surrounding area between 26-28 July (pp. 26-27 & 30-33). He then returned to Edinburgh where he made memorable studies of Holyrood Palace on 29-30 July (pp. 36-43), George Herriot’s Hospital (pp. 44-51) and the area around Edinburgh Castle on 30 July (pp. 50-59), among other city-centre locales. He also sketched details of various objets d’art in Edinburgh collections, and kept a customary eye out for any curiosities among the apparatus of mid-nineteenth-century urban life – see, for example, his drawing of an external first-floor “hanging cupboard” – presumably a sort of primitive cool box - that he observed from the window of his lodgings on 29 July (p. 35).

Scharf travelled back to London on Wednesday 6 August, arriving at Torrington Square late in the evening. However, on the way he had two stop-offs which afforded him enough time to garner sketches of the east window of Carlisle Cathedral (pp. 84-85) and a tomb in the Old Parish Church at Kendal (pp. 82-83). He would not contribute any further material to SSB 43 for another seven weeks – an unusually long gap for the sketchbooks. In order to account for this, it is necessary to sum up a crisis in Scharf’s personal and professional life that developed in the intervening period.

NPG7/3/7/4/1/1. Scharf’s own diary entry for Monday 30 June records his dinner with the vice chancellor of King’s College - NPG7/3/1/12. 9 According to Scharf’s own diary entry - NPG7/3/1/12. 10 According to Scharf Snr’s diary entry for 6 August which also notes his son’s purpose in attending the Archaeological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland’s annual meeting. NPG7/3/7/2/1/14.

4

2.iii. August-September 1856: events in Scharf’s personal life; appointment as Art Secretary

In his journal, Scharf’s father noted that his son had arrived home from Scotland “rather unwell, probably from fatigue”.11 Some days previously, according to an entry in his aunt’s diary on Saturday 2 August, Scharf had written from Edinburgh complaining of “being much fatigued with his journey and very uneasy in his seat from riding so far” – presumably this was exacerbated by recent horse-drawn forays along the bumpy roads of the Scottish Borders.12 Scharf’s symptoms worsened over the next few days and on 11 August his father’s journal mentions his son suffering from “having irruption coming out on the skin”.13 In their energetic dissection of Scharf’s personal life in Love Among the Archives, Helena Michie and Robyn Warhol have assumed that Scharf was merely afflicted with a severe case of haemorrhoids.14 But this was not simply a matter of being “very uneasy in his seat”; later comments in Scharf’s correspondence with colleagues, and entries in the diaries of his father and aunt, make it repeatedly clear that he was prone to extremely painful, and at times physically debilitating, “boils on his neck and legs”.15 These habitually beset Scharf at moments of physical and nervous stress, particularly affecting his neck, and broke out several times over the next year (to the extent that he became miserably bedridden at Manchester for the duration of the following Christmas Day – see the introduction to SSB 44). The timing of this particular outbreak in the summer of 1856 could not have been more awkward: on Friday 8 August, within 48 hours of his return from Edinburgh and with his painful symptoms worsening, Scharf found himself on a 6am train bound for Manchester.

11 Scharf Snr’s diary entry for 6 August - NPG7/3/7/2/1/14. Scharf’s own appointments diary merely records, “home at night from Edinburgh” - NPG7/3/1/12. According to later entries in the diaries of his father and aunt, he returned bearing gifts of a brooch and a scarf for his mother and aunt as well as plaid for ribbons, and further material (possibly also plaid) for his father, which the latter had made into trousers - see the entry in Scharf Snr’s diary for Good Friday, 10 April, 1857. 12 NPG7/3/7/4/1/5. 13 NPG7/3/7/2/1/14. 14 Michie and Warhol, 2015, pp. 135-136. Scharf Snr’s comments come from a diary entry for Monday 11 August, the date of his son’s return from Manchester following his first meeting with the Art Treasures Executive Committee. 15 See, for example, notes relevant to Christmas Day 1856 in Scharf Snr’s journal - NPG7/3/7/2/1/14. On 18 July Scharf’s aunt records that her nephew had been suffering from an eye complaint, but at this point it “was much better” and he seems to have recovered completely by 28 July - NPG7/3/7/4/1/5.

5

He went, in the words of his father, “by appointment to…visit the Committee for forming a Museum and Exhibition of Art Treasures, to which they gave [him] the distinguished situation of Secretary, having to travel and to choose objects”.16

The prestigious nature of this new position represented a whole range of exciting opportunities and brought relief to Scharf’s precarious financial situation (see also below; the Committee confirmed his salary of £500 plus expenses on 15 August).17 Nevertheless, Scharf was now faced with a temporary relocation to Manchester and an immense workload involving the prospect of a breakneck country-wide survey of scores of prominent art collections. He would be required to travel intensively, sifting through hundreds of pictures for his specific area of jurisdiction, the Gallery of Ancient Masters, as well as other works for other areas of the Art Treasures Exhibition. The weight of expectation also coincided with a ‘perfect storm’ brewing in Scharf’s professional and personal affairs which involved a further deterioration in his health.18 When he returned from Manchester on Monday 11 August, his aunt noted that he was “still very uneasy with his complaint” and by the following Thursday he was “very much unwell”.19 Nevertheless, all the following day, Friday 15 August, Scharf had to endure his discomfort while waiting around at London’s Reform Club in order to keep an appointment with the Chairman of the Art Treasures Executive Committee, the industrialist, Thomas Fairbairn (1823-1891), but the latter failed to show.20 Two days after that, Scharf attended a more successful dinner with the Art Treasures Exhibition’s pre- eminent art historical consultant, the Director of the Berlin Museum and author of the three-volume Treasures of Art of Great Britain, Gustav Friedrich Waagen (1794-1868).21 Scharf was already on very amicable terms with Waagen and met him in the company of the

16 From general notes compiled following an entry on 6 August - NPG7/3/7/2/1/14. On Scharf’s application for the post of Art Secretary in July 1856 see Croal, 2005, p. 53. The early start is recorded in Scharf’s own diary entry for 8 August: “started by 6 o’clock train Manchester saw the committee Manchester”. According to other entries in his diary, following his successful interview with the Executive Committee on 8 August, Scharf spent the weekend in the company of the local Liberal MP and former Mayor of Manchester Sir John Potter (1815- 1858) before returning to London on Monday 11 - NPG7/3/1/12. 17 Pergam, 2011, pp. 25 & 44 n. 76. 18 In an end of year summary inserted into his diary for 1856 Scharf reviewed his “financial embarrassments” – NPG7/3/1/12. See also the introduction to SSB 44. 19 NPG7/3/7/4/1/5. 20 According to Scharf’s aunt’s diary - NPG7/3/7/4/1/5. 21 For Waagen’s involvement in the exhibition see Pergam, 2011, pp. 33-35.

6 painter and future director of the , William Boxall (1800 –1879), and the sculptor (1790–1866).22

From his aunt’s diaries it is apparent that Scharf was still, however, in continual pain and discomfort throughout this period, and also sought medical attention on multiple occasions. His symptoms finally began to abate (but did not completely disappear) some days after he had settled into lodgings in Manchester in the middle of September (see below), when he could properly take stock of his new duties.23 An absence from London might also have been beneficial as, on top of everything else, there was turmoil in Scharf’s domestic life that was chiefly characterised by an increasing estrangement from his father. By the start of the summer, Scharf had become determined to separate his father’s living arrangements from those of himself, his mother and his aunt. This seems partly to have been prompted by a need to safeguard the family against any threat of bankruptcy that might arise from his father’s increasingly precarious career and hopelessness with money.24 But it was also propelled by Scharf’s own personal irritation and, at times, fury at what he perceived to be his father’s unreliable behaviour and general lack of moral and practical support for his own activities.25

On returning from Edinburgh at the start of August, an ailing Scharf angrily accused his father of showing typically little sympathy for his physical difficulties. This is, one should stress, directly contradicted by Scharf Snr’s own private journal; in it he regularly expresses concern for his son’s well-being and, at one point, registers his own distress at being accused by his son of acting to the contrary. As a seemingly proud father, Scharf Snr’s journal actually supplies an admiring and extremely useful running commentary on his son’s

22 As confirmed by Scharf’s diary - NPG7/3/1/12. As part of a testimonial letter submitted in relation to Scharf’s unsuccessful application to the post of Secretary of the National Gallery in 1854, Waagen wrote of Scharf that he was “a man of universally acknowledged respectable character. His knowledge of the history of Art is so thorough, that he has for several years lectured in London and other cities of England on very various portions of that branch of knowledge and with great success” – cited in Pergam, 2011, pp. 61-62. 23 On the continuing severity of Scharf’s symptoms see entries in his aunt’s diary for 6 and 7 September. In another entry from Tuesday 23 September she writes, “Received a letter from George very glad to hear is getting much better and comfortably settled in lodgings” - NPG7/3/7/4/1/5. 24 The diary of Scharf’s aunt reveals constant anxiety about the state of the family’s financial affairs. See entries for 3 and 17 May 1856 - NPG7/3/7/4/1/5. For more on Scharf Snr’s professional decline and tension with his son see Kierkuć-Bieliński, 2009, pp. 22-23. 25 See the entry dated 25 May in Scharf’s aunt’s 1857 diary – discussed in the introduction to SSB 46 - NPG7/3/7/4/1/6.

7 various achievements.26 The tension between the two, which could ebb and flow, seems to have reached a peak during the period covered by SSB 43 (Scharf’s anger, alongside his boils, would dramatically erupt again the next May - see the introduction to SSB 46), but the situation is not easy to read: Scharf’s volatile attitude to his father is never clearly articulated in his own letters and diaries.

What is clear, however, is that even before his return from Edinburgh, Scharf had resolved to take a house in Camden Town, at 1 Eastcott Place, with the intention that this would serve himself, his mother and his aunt only. They acquiesced to the plan, as did his father, albeit the latter with some reluctance.27 In the midst of grappling with his new duties as Art Secretary, much of August was therefore taken up with preparing for the move. When Scharf took possession of the property on 1 September, his father was forced to stay on alone at Torrington Square for about a fortnight, before taking up cheaper lodgings at 37 Preston Street, near to his estranged family (he seems, incidentally, to have remained on very good terms with Scharf’s mother and her sister, despite the division in their living arrangements). Ironically, Scharf Snr moved into Preston Street on the same day, Wednesday 17 Sept, on which his son was now required to move out of his new residence, leaving it to his aunt and mother for the best part of the next six weeks. Scharf was now forced to abandon London in order to base himself in Manchester in accordance with his new position as Art Secretary (he did return briefly to Eastcott Place between 13-15 October, but would not be regularly in London until the middle of November). Some of the books and personal effects that had been so recently packed and unpacked in the move to Camden were now boxed up again to furnish Scharf’s lodgings in Manchester.28

26 In memoranda for the week of the 11 August 1856 Scharf’s aunt noted that she was “very sorry to hear from George he was much displeased with his Father’s conduct towards him on his return” - NPG7/3/7/4/1/5. But there is no evidence from Scharf Snr’s own diaries that he was not sympathetic to his son’s difficulties. On 11 August he remarked, “George returned from Manchester, but unwell, I am sorry to say”, and then on 26 August, “George still continues unwell, and is rather ill humoured with me, reproaching me with not showing him enough attention in regard of his illness, as also not attending to give him assistance in doing Diagrams for his lectures, which hurts my feelings much as I always take great interest in anything which concerns him, but unfortunately, he will not believe me” - NPG7/3/7/2/1/14. For more on Scharf Snr’s evident pride in his son’s achievements see Kierkuć-Bieliński, 2009, p. 60. 27 See the entry in Scharf Snr’s diary for 26 August - NPG7/3/7/2/1/14. 28 Such is clear from various entries in the diaries of Scharf, his aunt and father - NPG7/3/1/12-14; NPG7/3/7/4/1/5-6; NPG7/3/7/2/1/14.

8

Scharf’s increasingly problematic relationship with his father, alongside other personal crises, have been ‘put on the couch’ by Warhol and Michie. Suffice to say, that all of the circumstances previously described help to explain the seven-week hiatus in Scharf’s compilation of material for SSB 43. When he returned to the sketchbook in earnest in the final days of September 1856, it was with the aim of documenting his survey of British art collections in preparation for the Art Treasures Exhibition.29

2.iv. September-October 1856: arrival in Manchester; Scharf’s survey of British collections begins

By the point at which Scharf resumed material for SSB 43 on 29 September, he had been based in Manchester for around a fortnight. After spending his first two nights in the city at the Royal Hotel on 17-18 September, he transferred to more permanent quarters at 2 Windsor Terrace, Old Trafford. His new address was closely adjacent to the site of the purpose-built exhibition venue – the massive iron, brick and glass edifice dubbed the Art Treasures Palace.30 His appointments diary reveals that he made his first inspection of the half-built site on Saturday 20 September, and was in the custom of sketching its rapid progress from his bedrooom window at Windsor Terrace. One such example was completed on Sunday 12 October (p. 95 – see also fig. 2.i), but it seems he had already sent an earlier, lost sketch of the scene to his mother and aunt the previous Tuesday.31 Scharf’s day-to-day business was contracted at the exhibition’s administrative offices in Manchester itself at 100 Mosley Street. Over the next ten days Scharf began reviewing correspondence received from lenders who had already been canvassed by means of an official circular sent on behalf of the Executive committee and via other correspondence.32

Long before Scharf had moved to Manchester, Fairbairn, with the assistance of other committee representatives, particularly the scholar Peter Cunningham (1816–69) and the exhibition’s General Commissioner, John Connellan Deane (1816–87), had begun petitioning some of the country’s most important owners in accordance with Waagen’s advice. By the

29 See also the discussion in Michie and Warhol, 2015, pp. 135-138. 30 On the design and development of the Art Treasures Palace see Pergam, 2011, pp. 52-59. 31 On Tuesday 7 October Scharf’s aunt recorded that she had “received a letter from George [and an] interesting sketch of the view from his bedroom window” - NPG7/3/7/4/1/5. 32 Pergam, 2011, p. 22, and for the text of “Circular No. 1” see Appendix III, pp. 245-247 at the same source.

9 end of July, Fairbairn had charged Cunningham with drawing up lists of desirable works to be formally requested from the most prominent owners, including the Duke of Devonshire and the Earls Warwick, and Yarborough. The first round of these overtures was issued between the middle of August and early September. Pergam has highlighted how over the next few months Fairbairn had to chastise Cunningham for his desultory efforts in compiling these lists. Scharf soon found also that little had been done as regards the many collectors who had promptly responded to those applications that pre-dated his appointment. Some needed further persuasion to lend, or had disputed what had been requested of them.33 It was here that Scharf ’s role as a roving expert prepared to carry out on-the-spot inspections of works of art came into its own. He began replying to lenders on 25 September (copies of the nearly six-hundred letters he wrote in his capacity as Art Secretary were duly filed in two thick ‘out-letters books’), and also started to exploit his own set of contacts – collectors and dealers he knew through his activities as an illustrator and art historical consultant. Gradually he began to build up an itinerary for the first leg of his on-the-spot survey of British collections (for more on his activities during these first few weeks in Manchester see the introduction to the database).

Fig. 2.i. George Scharf, Sketch of the Art Treasures Palace under construction, 12 October 1856. Page 95 of Scharf Sketchbook 43. Heinz Archive, National Portrait Gallery, London.

His ambitious odyssey was somewhat stop/ start at first. Following an initial lender visit to Tabley Hall, Cheshire on Monday 29 September, Scharf called at Marbury Hall (demolished 1968), near Hartford, Northwich in Cheshire to inspect the pictures belonging to James Hugh Smith Barry (1816-1856) (pp. 86-93). Barry had already signalled his intention to lend to the

33 See Pergam, 2011, pp. 79-80 and also Cottrell, 2020, p.292.

10

Executive Committee before Scharf began his duties as Art Secretary in mid-September. “I am happy to find by your letter of 21 August to the Executive Committee that you are so powerful a supporter of their great undertaking”, Scharf wrote to Barry on Friday 26 September:

…as Art Secretary to the Committee I have frequently to visit collections of art for the purpose of making selections, and on Monday next shall be comparatively in your neighbourhood and Lord de Tabley’s. I would therefore take the opportunity, if agreeable to you of calling at Marbury Hall on having done de Tabley’s for the purpose of considering which of your treasures might be included for the Manchester Exhibition.34

The day before Scharf’s visit he received a note from Smith Barry confirming that he would be happy to give his visitor dinner and even a bed for the night. It was delivered to Scharf, as per his request, while he was staying with a member of the Art Treasures Executive Committee, the MP and banker William Entwistle (1808-1865), at nearby High Legh that Saturday evening.35

Smith Barry was the grandson of his namesake the prominent collector James Hugh Smith Barry (1746? -1801) of Belmont Hall, Cheshire (the house was sold on James’s death and the collection was then moved to Marbury). There is a tinge of tragedy about this first visit: Smith Barry would not live to see his pictures included in the Manchester Exhibition as he died prematurely, at only forty-years-of-age, on 31 December. As his son and heir, Arthur Smith Barry (1843-1925), was only thirteen at the time, the seventeen pictures that had been promised were therefore exhibited as the property of the “Late J. Smith Barry”. Scharf made quick sketches of fifteen paintings at Marbury, some of them two-to-three to a page. Many standout works can be identified including Rubens’s Wrath of Achilles – one of a series of six oil sketches devoted to the life of Achilles which adorned Smith Barry’s bedroom. They were all shown at Manchester and are now in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam (p. 86; cat. 560). Other prominent works sketched by Scharf include

34 MCL M6/2/6/1/15. While Scharf secured his appointment with Barry, there are no notes or sketches that record his visit to George Warren, 2nd Lord de Tabley (1811-1887), of nearby Tabley House, apart from a confirmatory line in his diary for that day - NPG7/3/1/12. That he definitely visited Tabley House on this date is clear from comments in Scharf, 1857-1858, p. 309. The loans from de Tabley consisted of nothing lent to the Ancient Masters section of the exhibition, being chiefly pictures for the Modern and British Portrait Galleries. 35 One of only a few letters preserved among his private correspondence at the Heinz Archive of the National Portrait Gallery detailing the general grind of securing appointments with Art Treasures lenders - NPG 7/2/2/1. For the beginning of Scharf’s survey see also Cottrell, 2021, pp. 83-87.

11 two large canvases of The Arrest of Christ (National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa) and Christ on the Mount of Olives (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin) by Matthias Stom (p. 87; cat.612). These were then thought to be by his fellow Northern Caravaggist Gerrit van Honthorst, or “Gherardo dell[e] Notte” to give him his customary nickname, which Scharf also employed in a letter of 2 March 1857. Here he wrote to a representative of the Smith Barry estate, Shalcross Fitzherbert Widdington, to review his selections for Manchester, swapping the Arrest of Christ for the Christ on the Mount of Olives: “This would be a vast improvement and…would be quite enough as an example of the master’s historic style” (for more on Scharf’s generally dismissive attitude to Caravaggio and his followers see the introductions to SSB 45 & 47).36

2.v. October 1856: and Warwick Castle

His visit to Marbury complete, Scharf returned to Manchester on the next day, 30 September, and was there almost continuously for the next fortnight, preoccupied with Art Treasures correspondence and in planning his tour proper. It began, after a brief return to London, at Althorp in Northamptonshire on 16 October and involved the first ‘big fish’ of Scharf’s trawl through British collections, Frederick, 4th Earl Spencer (1798 – 1857). The Earl contributed no less than twenty-five works to the Ancient Masters section in addition to several important items destined for the British Portrait and Modern Masters Galleries.37 The groundwork for this visit had been laid some time previously, as a list of desired works had already been sent to the Earl on Monday 8 September signed by another member of the exhibition’s Executive Committee, the textile manufacturer Thomas Ashton (1818- 1898).38 But a proper vetting process was now required, and Scharf carried this out over two days between 16-17 October. Among those items selected and sketched by Scharf were two female self-portraits, one by Sophonisba Anguissola (cat. 855) and the other by Michaelina Wautier (cat. 835), but then thought to be by Artemisia Gentileschi (p. 108). Although most items can be easily identified, a sketch of a seventeenth-century Italian work depicting St Remigius Celebrating Mass, which was not selected by Scharf for Manchester, dispels confusion in the literature over its status as an Art Treasures item (cat. 369 - see pp. 102 & 107).

36 MCL M6/2/6/1/276-277. 37 The visit to Earl Spencer was also covered in LB I, pp. 10-34. 38 See Pergam, 2011, p. 15.

12

As would frequently be the case, Scharf did not restrict himself to sketches and notes on continental old masters in line with his official remit. He also expressed an interest in several potential loans to the Modern Masters and British Portrait Galleries, including portraits of the and their relatives by Van Dyck, Gainsborough and Reynolds. In the pages devoted to his visit to Althorp Scharf was also briefly distracted by a domestic gathering which he apparently drew from life, and attempted three brief sketches of two women playing with a baby and a pet dog (see pp. 104-106 and fig. 2.ii). It is tempting to identify them with specific members of the Spencer family, especially as the 4th Earl had married his second, much younger wife, Adelaide Horatia Seymour (1825–1877), only two years previously. Their first child, Lady Victoria Alexandrina Spencer (1855-1906), would have been just shy of her first birthday at the time of Scharf’s visit. As at Marbury Hall, there is a hint of impending tragedy about Scharf’s appointment – the 4th Earl would be dead within eighteen months.39

Fig. 2.ii. George Scharf, Sketches of a woman, a baby and a pet dog and Philippe de Champagne’s ‘Portrait of Robert Arnaud d’Andilly’, Althorp, Northamptonshire, 16 October 1856. Page 105 of Scharf Sketchbook 43. Heinz Archive, National Portrait Gallery, London.

It may be that Scharf stayed overnight at Althorp in order to complete his inspection. But it is also possible that he was a guest at nearby Overstone Park - a house belonging to Samuel Jones-Loyd, 1st Baron Overstone (1796-1883), the Manchester banker who later became Chairman of the General Committee of the Art Treasures Exhibition on the death of Francis Egerton, 1st Earl of Ellesmere on 18 February 1857, and another of its most important lenders. Scharf also seems to have relied on Overstone’s patronage in his own personal and financial affairs – according to the ‘end-of-year report’ that Scharf inserted into his 1856

39 The 4th Earl died at the end of December 1857. See also Cottrell, 2021, p. 89-90.

13 diary (see the introduction to SSB 44). In any case, Scharf’s diary records that he departed Overstone on Friday 17 October.40

He was first bound for Milton Hall, Peterborough, the residence of his next collector, William Thomas Spencer Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, 6th Earl Fitzwilliam (1815-1902). Scharf sketched several paintings (pp. 108-113), but with the exception of Guercino’s Ruben Showing Joseph's Coat to Jacob (p. 110), it is difficult to securely identify the works featured, and no loans resulted. Scharf stayed at Leicester that night (p. 113 is notable for its sketch of the entrance to the city’s Old Nag’s Head Inn – see also fig. 2.iii), before journeying on to nearby Garendon Park (destroyed by fire in 1964) where he surveyed the collection of former local MP Charles March Phillipps (1779–1862). The visit furnished full-page sketches of two Salvator Rosa landscapes (pp. 114-115) that were lent along with a third to Manchester, among other items.

Fig. 2.iii. George Scharf, Sketch of the Old Nag’s Head Inn, Leicester, 18 October 1856. Detail of page 113 of Scharf Sketchbook 43. Heinz Archive, National Portrait Gallery, London.

Scharf then stayed with his friend, the society hostess, Lady Sarah Caroline Sitwell (1779- 1860), at her home at Rempstone Hall, Loughborough, on the night of Saturday 18 October. Scharf’s letters and diaries reveal that he was a frequent visitor there during the 1850s (he would next return for a three-day visit beginning on 17 August 1857), and here one sees clear evidence of him using his own social and professional network to garner loans.41 The

40 NPG7/3/1/12. 41 See also Cottrell, 2021, pp. 97-99.

14 two paintings sketched on pages 116 and 117 - a Rest on the Flight into Egypt by Carel de Moor (cat. 1044) and an Empoli Ecce Homo (cat.222)- represent, however, the sum of her contribution. The following day, Sunday 19 October, Scharf took a train to Leamington Spa where he made studies of several pictures belonging to a Mr Earles. Here, on pages 118- 119, in cramming smaller thumbnail sketches onto one double-page spread, Scharf anticipates the congested layouts of SSB 44 and 45. Despite the number of works belonging to Earles featured on these pages, none were lent to Manchester.

Richer pickings were imminent, however: Scharf arrived in Warwick that evening in readiness for his visit to Warwick Castle on the next day, Monday 20 October.42 Here he would devote nearly all the remaining seventeen pages of SSB 43 to his survey of paintings belonging to Guy Greville, 4th (1818-1893), who was destined, along with Earl Spencer, to become one of the Art Treasures’ most important lenders (pp. 120-137, with some earlier notes on p. 112). Once again, the visit had been primed as a result of the intervention of the Executive Committee, using the dealer Henry Farrer as an intermediary.43 As discussed in the introduction to the database, Earl Warwick had directly replied to the Executive Committee in a letter of 4 October and this reveals that he had been less than impressed with the list of proposed loans compiled by the General Commissioner, John Connellan Deane. The works named hardly represented the best of the Earl’s collection, and were drawn from what he regarded as a perfunctory and out-of-date survey by Waagen. It was in such circumstances that Scharf would come into his own. Of the thirty-seven paintings sketched by Scharf on this, the last, visit to be featured in SSB 43, some remain at Warwick Castle, but many of the choicer items have been dispersed. These include major works such as Rubens’s Portrait of Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Arundel now in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (p. 122; BPG, cat. 107) and ’s Portrait of a Standard Bearer in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (p.129; cat. 680)

42 This visit was arranged with the Earl in a letter of 7 October - MCL M6/2/6/1/54-55. Scharf’s second would take place on 7 February – see introduction to SSB 45. 43 Pergam, 2011, p. 32, also records how Farrer was offered the role of an official consultant to the Art Treasures Exhibition but negotiations over the nature of his remuneration came to nothing. In a letter to Farrer of 26 September, Warwick writes, “I cannot think the proposed selection altogether good, one picture which they call Van Dyck we have always considered a copy & some of…the others named are doubtful” – MCL M6/2/11/231 (copy).

15

- the last of which the Earl had brought to the Executive Committee’s attention as among those desirable items “not named by Dr Waagen”.44

With his visit to Warwick Castle complete, Scharf returned to Manchester by Tuesday 21 October and to a daily round of Art Treasures correspondence prefatory to his next sequence of appointments. There was a lot to catch up on, including replies to important lenders who had written to make their collections available but which predated Scharf’s own involvement in the planning of the exhibition. As he remarked in a follow-up letter to Charles March Phillipps on Friday 24 October, “I regret indeed on looking back through our letter book previous to the date of my taking office, to see how many offers of the greatest importance have as not yet been responded to. My own duties of visiting and inspecting pictures leave me indeed very little time for correspondence”.45 Scharf’s diary for Saturday 25 October then records a visit to discuss loans at the Liverpool Royal Institution. SSB 44 picks up with Scharf the day after, as part of a visit to the ’s collection at Knowsley Hall, near Liverpool (see the introduction to SSB 44).46

October 2018 (revised August 2021) https://people.ucd.ie/philip.cottrell

44 Letter of 4 October 1856 - MCL M6/2/11/274. For Scharf’s dealings with Warwick see also Cottrell, 2020, p. 292 and also the introduction to SSB 48. 45 MCL M6/2/6/1/82. 46 NPG7/3/1/12.

16