Portrait of Stephen Beckingham (1730 or 1731-1813)

signed, dated, and inscribed on a label on the stretcher: Stephen Beckingham / Pompeo Batoni Pinxit / Romae 1752

oil on canvas

canvas: 38 ¾ by 28 ¾ in.; 98.4 by 73.0 cm.

Provenance

Painted in Rome for Stephen Beckingham VI (1730 or 1731-1813), 1752, and then brought to London;

Thence by descent to his daughter, the Hon. Dorothy Charlotte Montagu (1766-1821);

Thence by inheritance to Catherine Gregorie Brickdale (1788-1870);

Thence by descent to her son, Mathew Inglett Fortescue-Brickdale (1817-1894), Quantock Farm, Somerset;

Thence by descent to his son, Charles Fortescue-Brickdale (1857-1944);

Thence by descent to his son, Matthew Fortescue-Brickdale (1890-1969);

Thence transferred to the Matthew Fortescue-Brickdale Will Trust;

By whom sold ("The Property of the Matthew Fortescue-Brickdale Will Trust"), London, Christie's, 22 November 1985, lot 119;

With Stair Sainty Matthiesen, New York, 1986;

Acquired via private sale, Sotheby's, New York, circa 1998.

Note The preeminent portraitist in eighteenth-century Rome and among the most celebrated painters in Europe at the time, Pompeo Batoni painted Stephen Beckingham VI in 1752. Polished in finish, yet spontaneous in handling, Batoni’s Portrait of Stephen Beckingham is at once fresh and refined. This rare combination enabled Batoni to produce “a striking likeness of everyone he paints,” as one Englishman living in Rome recounted, of which the present work is a pristine example.1

Batoni’s Portrait of Stephen Beckingham must have captured an especially vivid and memorable likeness of its sitter. As an inscription on the work’s stretcher relates, the portrait along with all of Beckingham’s luggage, was lost en route from Rome to England. Several years later, Beckingham attended a dinner party where another guest inquired if he had ever travelled to Italy, having recognized him from a portrait that “greatly resemble[ed] him” that the guest had seen lingering in an Italian Custom House. The portrait was thus recovered in a fortuitous turn of events that offers a remarkable testament to Batoni’s artistic abilities.2

The only child of Stephen Beckingham V and Mary Cox (fig. 1), Stephen Beckingham VI attended Leipzig University before traveling to Rome in 1752. Although Batoni had initially built his reputation as a history painter, by the 1750s, his main artistic enterprise was the production of stately portraits of Grand Tourists, who sought to commemorate their visits to Rome. While Beckingham may have carried a sword, his costume—fur-trimmed green frock coat with gold braiding, red jacket trimmed with gold frogged fastenings, and gold sash—is an invented evocation of the uniforms worn by hussar soldiers. Perhaps intended to evoke Saxon prototypes, the somewhat exotic outfit—similar that worn by John Woodyeare in Batoni’s near-contemporaneous portrait (fig. 2)—endows the British gentleman with a swashbuckling air.

In Rome, where Beckingham lived in the via della Croce by the Spanish Steps, he commissioned works from a number of artists. In addition to the present portrait and a version in miniature, these included several drawings from Richard Wilson and a painting of Time Discovering Truth from Thomas Jenkins.3 Beckingham also acquired several classical sculptures from Jenkins as well as landscape paintings by Wilson; drawings by Jacob Ennis, Jean-Baptiste Lallemand, Charles-Louis Clérisseau, and Paolo Fidanza; and sculptures by Simon Vierpyl and Cristiano Dehn.4 Several years after Beckingham’s return to London, he married Dorothy Sawbridge of Olantigh, Kent; the couple divided their time between Knightsbridge, Bourne Place, Kent, and Ivy House, Hampton Court.

1 Bowron 2008, p. 37.

2 "This Portrait was brought from Rome by Mr Beckingham. In returning to England by sea it together with all Mr Beckingham's Baggage was lost, by some accident to the Vessell, in which Mr Beckingham was -- Some years after at a dinner party, Mr Beckingham was asked if he had ever been in Italy, the person who asked the question stating that he had seen in an Italian Customs House a Portrait greatly resembling him. This led to enquiry, and the Portrait was recovered -- Stephen Beckingham Esq. by Pompeio Battoni"

3 A list of pictures in Beckingham’s Knightsbridge home includes the present portrait, valued at 30 sequins as well as “D[itt]o in miniature by d[itt]o,” valued at 15 sequins. See Clark 1985, p. 254.