Dartmouth, William Legge, 2nd Earl of
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- Title
- Dartmouth, William Legge, 2nd Earl of
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(1731 - 1801), 1st surv. s. of Vct. Lewisham (d. 1732); Trin. Oxf. 1749; suc. gd.-fa. 1750 as 2nd E. of Dartmouth; FRS and FSA 1754; m. 1755 Frances Nicoll.
1752 - 3 Rome (by Jan. 1753 - Apr. - ), Naples (20 Apr. - May), Paestum (May), Pisa (18 Jun.), Turin (by 15 Aug.) [Lyons 1 Sep., England by May 1754]
The young Lord Dartmouth showed himself to be a discerning patron of the fine arts in the course of the year he spent in Italy. He made the grand tour with his step-brother Frederick, Lord North (Dartmouth's widowed mother having remarried North's widowed father), and they shared Christopher Golding as their tutor. In Rome, where they had arrived by January 1753,1 they stayed in the Casa Guarnieri.2 Both sat to Batoni for portraits only completed in 1756 (Clark/Bowron 192, 195; NG London [North] and priv. coll.) and Batoni also made miniature portraits of them both in watercolour (Clark/Bowron 193, 194; Sotheby 27 Jul. 1923 [North] and priv. coll., Rome). Both young men also sat to Thomas Jenkins3 who painted a Nymph for Dartmouth and made him drawings from famous statues. Jenkins soon became his agent, his subsequent letters from Rome describing his acquisitions made with 'money paid for the use of Lord Dartmouth in Rome in 1753 and 1754'.4
It was doubtless Jenkins who persuaded Dartmouth to become a substantial patron of his friend Richard Wilson; he apparently commissioned two views of Rome in oil, completed in 1753,5 and, according to Farington,6 acquired sixty-eight of his drawings. Jenkins's first account from Rome (25 June 1754) included twelve finished Wilson drawings of Rome,7 as well as paintings by G.B. Busiri (eight views of Rome; sold Sotheby's, 8 Jul. 1964), Salvator Rosa, Dughet and Benefial, and still-lifes by van der Meulen and Stern, companion pieces 'to the pictures they before had the honour to do for your Lordship'.4 On 14 December 1754 Jenkins dispatched a case with drawings by Batoni, Wilson and Jenkins himself, and on 28 February 1755 more pictures, including two landscapes by Momper and 'a portfolio with 30 of Mr Wilson's drawings'.
Although their tour was not protracted it was one of particular interest. On 20 April they were in Capua on their way to Naples, where they were apparently with Richard Wilson;8 in May 1753 they set out for Paestum, an unusual excursion at this time. A letter from North to his former tutor at Eton, Charles Dampier, described their journey in detail.9 'Ye road from Rome to Naples abounds with Classical amusement: ... ye Road from Naples to Paestum is no less amusing', he begins, and the greater part of his letter provides one of the earliest accounts by an English traveller of the Greek Doric temples at Paestum.(10) On their return journey, Dartmouth and North were in Pisa on 18 June11 and had passed through Turin by 15 August.(12) By the end of May 1754 Dartmouth had taken his seat in the House of Lords.
Amongst the Dartmouth papers there is a six-page manuscript giving advice to a traveller in Italy,13 presumably prepared for Dartmouth's visit: in Rome Jenkins and Wilson alone are listed as English students of painting, while James Russel and [John?] Parker appear as antiquarians.
1. Wicklow MSS (J. Russel, 16 Jan. 1753). 2. AVR SA, S.Andrea delle Fratte 1753. 3. HMC Dartmouth, 3:168, 171, 276. 4. HMC Dartmouth, 3:168 (25 Jun. 1754), and 168 - 71. 5. R.B. Ford, Burl.Mag., 94[1952]:311 - 12. Constable, Wilson, 33. 6. Farington Diary (9 Jun. 1806). 7. R.B. Ford, Burl.Mag.,
90[1948]:337 - 45. 8. ASN cra 1257. Ford (at n7), 341 and n18. 9. Dated 1 - 19 Sep. 1753; War.CRO 125c/2/1 - 2. 10. M. McCarthy, Burl.Mag., 114[1972]: 761 - 2, 765 (North's description cited in toto). 11. Hervey (Aug.) Jnl. (18 Jun. 1753). 12. SP 105/310, f.117 (Rochford, 15 Aug. 1753). 13. Anon.MSS c.1752.