Neil Jeffares, Dictionary of pastellists before 1800 Online edition NB: This article is divided into the following pdfs: for 60 gns including frames and glass. Bath His own art collection was sold after his • Essay; Named sitters A-H subsequently attracted other portraitists: Thomas wife’s death (12.XII.1793), by Mr Plura on • Named sitters I-Z Worlidge arrived in 1754; Gainsborough was 18.II.1794. It included, as well as a couple of • Unnamed sitters &c. there between 1759 and 1774; Joseph Wright Rosalbas, a so-called cartoon of the Murder of the Follow the hyperlinks for the remaining sections. followed, but found that the demand was for Innocents thought to be by Rapahel; it was offered crayon portraits, not oils. Thomas Lawrence after Prince’s death to the Royal Academy but started his career producing pastel heads for a rejected, but its prestige at the time must have HOARE, William, RA guinea each. been considerable. XII XII Eye, Suffolk . .1707 – Bath 10. .1792 On 4.X.1742 at Lincoln’s Inn chapel in As he did not reside in London (apart from a William Hoare “of Bath” was the son of a London Hoare married Elizabeth Barker (1719– short period from 1751 before returning to farmer and land agent, John Hoare, and is said to 1793: was she the Miss B–– of the 1738 poem?). Bath), he played little part in the official art have been born near Eye in Suffolk, although no The service was conducted by Rev. Richard establishment, although he did exhibit a couple baptismal record has been found (the date given Chenevix (Lincoln’s Inn Register of Admissions, of items at the Society of Artists in 1761 and in the Bath Abbey memorial is consistent with 1896, II, p. 621), later bishop of Waterford, 1762. In 1769 he became a member of the Royal the age given in the memorial at St Swithin’s brother of the Paul Daniel Chenevix with whom Academy (along with Zoffany he was nominated Walcot, Bath if he was born in the last few weeks Hoare was indirectly connected. Elizabeth was personally by the king), exhibiting from 1770 to of 1707). His father moved to Berkshire soon the daughter of the goldsmith Joseph Barker 1779, when he effectively (if not completely) after. A sister, Hannah, married a Huguenot (1680–1768), Paul Daniel Chenevix’s executor. retired. His contributions included more oil silversmith, Peter Russel. (After Hannah’s death Hoare’s neighbour in Bath was Paul Bertrand, a paintings than pastels, although the latter in 1749, Peter married Elizabeth Deards, widow Huguenot goldsmith and toyman in Bath whose predominate in the salerooms, suggesting that of Paul Daniel Chenevix, another goldsmith; second wife, Mary Deards, was the sister of the bulk of his work was in this medium, but they ran the celebrated Chenevix’s Toy Shop in Elizabeth, Paul Daniel Chenevix’s widow. (The that he regarded oil paintings as more suited to Charing Cross, and Elizabeth had leased rates books show Hoare in Barton Street from public exhibition. Oil was also employed for a Strawberry Hill to Horace Walpole in 1749). 1742; Hoare was an executor of Bertrand’s will number of his portraits of statesmen. Hoare William Hoare was in London in the 1720s in 1755.) That these relationships mattered may unusually made portrait drawings, both in black where he is believed to have studied with be seen in an inscription on the back of J.395.1178 chalk and in the red more favoured by the Giuseppe Grisoni, and in 1728 he travelled with in Hoare’s own hand, under the sitter’s name: French school. him to Italy, passing through Genoa and “Enquire of Mr Chevenix [sic] where he lives”: Hoare’s interest in pastel may have been Florence. In Genoa on 23.XI.1730, Sir Charles presumably the sitter had been introduced to developed in response to works by Carriera (he Hanbury Williams provided Hoare with a letter Hoare by Paul Daniel Chenevix, who had his made a number of lightly mythologised genre of introduction to Francis Colman, the British London address after the sitter had left Bath. pieces in imitation) and (as suggested more resident in Florence (the result was a pastel of Two of Hoare’s four surviving children, Mary plausibly by Newby in Hoare 1990) by Luti, but Colman which, like the Rosalba portrait of him, and Prince (qq.v.), became artists. Hoare was his portraiture is essentially in the English has been lost since the diplomat’s son’s sale in exceptionally well educated (“not only the most tradition of Richardson. It is thought that Hoare 1795). When in Rome Hoare studied (alongside virtuous, friendly and inoffensive of men, but planned a trip to Paris and The Netherlands Pompeo Batoni) under Francesco Fernandi one of the best classical scholars both in Greek c.1750, and, although cut short by the death of a “Imperiali”. Here the work of Luti would have and Latin with whom I was ever acquainted”, sister, he may have reached Paris. Thereafter been well known, but Rome also gave Hoare the according to the rector of Claverton), and greater attention to background, lighting and opportunity to befriend a number of future appears as a subscriber to numerous scholarly colour is evident in the work. He never signed patrons and contacts, among them the bear- publications of the day. He was evidently at ease (although several examples are inscribed directly leader Joseph Spence (in Rome in 1732 with the socially, and in 1742 he was made a governor of on the back of the canvas with the customer’s future Duke of Dorset, and later with Lord the new Bath Mineral Water Hospital – a useful name and location for dispatch, in a flowing Lincoln). Most sources interpret Vertue’s notes source of commissions (Lord Chesterfield italic hand that matches the autograph as implying that Hoare remained in Italy for became president of the Hospital in 1744). inscription on Hoare’s drawing of his friend some nine years, returning to London c.1739, Among artists, Alexander Cozens was a Zincke in the British Museum). but a painting of the African slave Ayuba particular friend of; several letters survive There is considerable variation in quality Suleiman Diallo, called Job ben Solomon, (Walpole Society 1927, pp. 91ff). Hoare built up among the innumerable pastels attributed to executed in London in 1733 (London, NPG) a particular following among statesmen such as him, which probably include works by Knapton, suggests a much shorter stay, between 1729 and the Pitt, Grenville and Pelham families. The Cotes and Pond. Their early works can at times 1732, with the possibility of a second journey banking Hoares (unrelated until the artist’s be very similar, but generally Hoare’s pastels are from which he returned c.1739. daughter Mary married into the family in 1765) distinguished by clearer colours than Knapton’s In any case Hoare decided to settle in Bath in were also important patrons, and a large number (the penchant for acidic reds and yellows is the late 1730s. (A poem “To Mr H––e at Bath of his pastels survive at Stourhead – among reminiscent of Luti); the pastel is applied thinly on painting Miss B––’s picture” appeared in the them a copy of a painting then thought to be by and can be dry; most of Hoare’s pictures in the Gentleman’s magazine in .II.1738, p. 98: Hoare is Rubens at Wilton, commissioned in 1762 for the medium lack the subtlety and depth of colour of compared to Apelles, who fell in love with his very considerable sum of £200. Henry Hoare’s Cotes’s mature work. Many of his features are sitter.) This was a wise move; as in Carriera’s daughter married the Earl of Ailesbury and a stylised, notably the rosebud mouths of his Venice, the market in Bath was ideal for portraits group of portraits remained at Savernake until female sitters. His portrait of Pope, executed of wealthy visitors with the leisure for sittings (at 2011. (A bill from 1769 is in the archives.) around 1743, is probably his best known image, least the few required for pastels), and the Hoare died at 6 Edgar Buildings, Bath on with multiple versions and copies. Prince Hoare novelty and convenience of the medium allowed 10.XII.1792. His will (in which he describes mentioned to Joseph Farington that “when Pope Hoare rapidly to establish a successful practice. himself as a “limner”) left everything to his wife, sat to His Father for a Portrait, He showed an George Vertue noted that Hoare charged 5 gns but as she died the following year, probate was anxiety to conceal the deformity of his person, & for a pastel, or 8 gns framed and glazed in 1738; granted to their eldest son, also William (1752– had a cloak thrown over his shoulders, & while in 1742, he held him responsible for the rage for 1809). He in turn died without completing the Mr Hoare was painting that part of the picture the “darling modish study” of crayon painting; process, which was then assigned to an official He came behind Him & said He need not be by 1749 Hoare “has had better success than any nominee. According to the Index of Bath artists, very particular about the Shoulders”, which may other painter there [Bath] before him”. Vertue’s Hoare’s fortune amounted to £37,000, of which in part account for the uncharacteristic prices (much quoted since) were of course at the Prince Hoare received £25,000 and Mary, by appearance, verging on crudeness, of surviving start of Hoare’s career: much later a set of four then widowed, £8000.