Bulletin 17, 1971

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Chandos, Marlborough and Kneller: 
Painting and "Protest" in the Age of Queen Anne

by Douglas Stewart

Pages  1  |  2  |  3  |  4 

Notes

14 The inventory is Huntington Library MS. ST 83, in which the picture is described as "Duke of Chandos' Family piece by Sir Godfrey Kneller".

15 See the plan in Collins Baker, facing p. 144. The room measured 22 feet 2 inches in width, was 26 feet deep and had a ceiling of 15 feet 6 inches. It was situated at the right-hand corner of the building on the ground floor, behind the two front bays. Since the corner walls were pierced by windows and the back wall had a fireplace, the most likely site for the picture would have been the long inner side wall.

16 See Collins Baker, p. 148. In his early years, and after Kneller's death, Chandos sat to less fashionable portrait painters such as Hawker, Michael Dahl and Jonathan Richardson (see Collins Baker, passim). Dahl's full-length portrait in robes that was in the Stowe sale, 1921 (Collins Baker, frontispiece) appears to be the one now at Sam Lord's Castle, Barbados. I am indebted to my uncle, Dr. J. D. Stewart, for this reference 

17 I am very grateful to Lord Spencer for permission to publish the picture here. It formerly belonged to the Earls of Chichester. According to the 1725 inventory, it hung in the Library and was valued at £ 80 (see Collins Baker, p. 167). This is considerably above the 60 guineas that Kneller normally charged for a full-length portrait in his later days, but the figure may include frame. Also, the attention paid to the background figures may have raised the price.

18 Huntington Library , ST 57. xvi, pp. 435-36.

19 Huntington Library, ST 57, xvii, p. 52. Collins Baker, p. 167, cited the latter part of this letter, but did not connect it with the Althorp portrait.

20 Winston S. Churchill, Marlborough, His Life and Times, vol. 4 (London: Harrap, 1938), p. 510.

21 In the Blenheim archives. See David Green, Blenheim Palace (London: Country Life, 1951), pp. 298-99. The picture was in the Marlborough Exhibition, Chesterfield House, London, 1934, no.426

22 G. Vertue, op. cit., vol. V, Walpole Society, vol. 26 (Oxford, 1938) p. 88. It appeared in the Mead sale, March 1754, 2nd day, lot 15. Dr. Mead was named as a pall-bearer in Kneller's will. (Somerset House, Prerogative Court of Canterbury, Richmond, f.266) .

23 See Letters and the Second Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. and with introd. by R. G. Howarth (London, Toronto: Dent, and New York: Dutton, 1932), p. 213.

24 Kneller held other official posts, including those of Gentleman of the Privy Chamber and Deputy Lord Lieutenant for Middlesex. He was also a Justice of the Peace.

In spite of his Whig politics, Kneller evidently could not swallow the Whig propaganda about the birth of James II's son (The Old Pretender). At a college dinner at Oxford, he challenged Dr. Wallis' s questioning of the legitimacy of the Prince of Wales, saying that "he did not in ye" least doubt but that he was the son of K. James and Q. Mary". See Remarks and Collections of Thomas Reame, vol. I: 4 July 1705-19 March 1707, ed. by C. E. Dobie, Oxford Historical Society Publications, vol. II (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1885), p. 83.

25. Quoted in J. B. Wolf-Louis XIV (New York: Norton, 1968), p. 558.

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