Completed Dress and Textiles, East of England and The Midlands: Artists and Subjects, Portraits: British 18th C, Portraits: British 19th C 34 comments Could this be one of the Bishops of Worcester?
Photo credit: Bewdley Museum
Art UK has received two submissions about this portrait but there is little to go on.
Rachel Gardner asked whether this might be Reverend William Parsons Turton who was born in Bewdley (c.1819) and lived and died in Nottinghamshire. Rachel speculated because other members of the Turton family are represented in the collection at Bewdley Museum.
Martin Hopkinson wrote, ‘This is a portrait of an 18th century bishop. Can anyone identify him? One should start looking through the Bishops of Worcester. Does it appear in John Ingamells, ‘The English Episcopal Portrait 1559–1835’, The Paul Mellon for Studies in British Art, 1981?’
The Clergy of the Church of England database shows four William Turtons and lists bishops by diocese. https://theclergydatabase.org.uk/jsp/search/index.jsp
Liz Cowley, Collections and Interpretation Officer at Bewdley Museum has replied, 'I haven’t been able to find information relating to this painting. It was found unaccessioned in the museum’s store and without a frame.'
Completed, Outcome
This discussion is now closed. The title has been updated from ‘Portrait of a Clergyman’ to ‘William Lloyd (1627–1717), Bishop of Worcester’. ‘Unknown artist’ has been changed to ‘British School’.
Thank you to everyone who contributed to the discussion. To anyone viewing this discussion for the first time, please see below for all the comments that led to this conclusion.
33 comments
Certainly a bishop and certainly early C18th (perhaps even earlier?). He looks pretty like William Lloyd (1627–1717), Bishop of Worcester 1699-1717, though not quite close enough to this other portrait of him to be certain without further work: https://bit.ly/3pcABoP. In any case it's the right period to be looking at.
If he was Bishop of Worcester, he might be William Lloyd. See below:
https://bit.ly/3AbUmCf
https://bit.ly/3Qe1Pr3
https://bit.ly/3JX2Cu7
As for someone born c. 1819 (William Turton), this does not look like a Victorian era picture or clergyman.
This version doesn't appear in Ingamells, ‘The English Episcopal Portrait 1559–1835’ but a head and shoulders portrait of William Lloyd by Enoch Seeman does and it strongly resembles the person in the portrait here. This version is recorded as being at Hartlebury Castle and is signed and dated 1714.
Together with the engraving of Lloyd and the other illustrations found I think it represents a strong case for it being him. I have taken a quick pic from Ingamells and attached. I hope it has come out okay and sorry for the poor quality.
Seeman's portrait is early for him and doesn't seem to be typical of his later style. So is it possible that this portrait under discussion is by him also? I wouldn't ordinarily think so but maybe it could be.
I suppose it might be by Enoch Seeman's father, Isaac Seeman.
Miles, the face of the picture you linked from Ingamells is essentially identical to ours, although the hair is slightly different. Our man is indeed William Lloyd.
Although the year of birth for Enoch Seeman is given as c. 1694 on Art UK, the NPG has it as 1689 or 1690, and his Wikipedia entry https://bit.ly/3SLBuCo has it as c. 1689. There is a group (family) portrait by him at Castle Forbes in Grampian, Scotland dated 1708. Thus, a 1714 portrait could certainly be by him.
The sitter, however, would have been around 87 in 1714, and he does not look that old in this portrait. Seeman is known to have copied some 17th century pictures by others, so it is conceivable that the Hartlebury picture could be a copy of ours, and that ours might be an older portrait by someone else. In any case, it is certainly British School.
Pardon my mistake above: the father of Enoch Seeman the Younger was obviously Enoch Seeman the Elder, not Isaac Seeman.
The artist John Closterman painted William Lloyd.
https://www.google.ca/books/edition/A_Critical_and_Commercial_Dictionary_of/GMZKcpTuim8C?hl=en&gbpv=0
I suspect the painter of the Hartlebury portrait was Enoch Seeman the Elder, who was born in 1661 (it was he who was the son of Isaac) and who moved to London in 1704 with his family including Enoch the Younger (b 1694 Danzig). (https://bit.ly/3BYqOu3). As Wiki points out a number of portraits from the 1710s have recently been reattributed from the son to the father (https://bit.ly/3bQljD7).
Dated portraits, for example from around 1688 when at 61 he was one of the ‘Seven Bishops’ (https://bit.ly/3C1YYwZ) do show him looking younger than you might expect, but still you could expect this to be a little earlier in his episcopacy than 1714 when he was 87. The same thing probably applies to Lambeth portrait Osmund linked to above where details of his promotion to Worcester at the age of 72 may have been added to an earlier portrait.
Do we know if Hartlebury Castle portrait is still there (they don’t seem to be on ArtUk yet) or if it remained with the Diocese when the See downsized in 2007? The Bewdley one is is so close to the Hartlebury, maybe showing Lloyd a bit older, and Bewdley is only 6 km from the Castle it would be interesting to compare them from more up to date images.
It is interesting that the head is significantly better done than the rest of the picture, which is mediocre and perfunctory.
Enoch Seeman the Younger might have been inspired by his father’s work when he created the portrait of Sir Isaac Newton, believed to be from 1726, that is at this link.
https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-5975445
Jacinto – I think it’s difficult to tell about the quality because there has clearly been partial cleaning around the head area, and as you say that makes it look better. But it’s possible that if the rest of the picture had a good sympathetic clean, that might improve quite a bit as well.
An obituary in 'Aris's Birmingham Gazette' of August 31, 1761, shows that Rev. William Lloyd's granddaughter and her husband John Soley lived near Bewdley.
One of the webpages of Mel Lockie, who has researched historical records, mentions the home of John Soley:
"In 1704, the manor of Neen Savage was purchased from the family of Kettleby by John Soley, of Sambourne, near Bewdley, though as late as 1732 it occurs in conveyances of the Kettleby estates. ...
It continued in the Soley family until the 19th century. (Blakeway MSS. 22, pages 104-113) [1]. The Soleys are buried at Ribbesford. John Soley, the last of the family, left Neen by his will to Challenor Ogle, on whose death without issue it passed to Thomas Barwick Lloyd Baker [1807–1886] of Hardwicke Court (whose father, Thomas John Lloyd Baker, was second cousin of John Soley), and it is now the property of his grandson Captain Michael Granville Lloyd-Baker [1873–1916]."
https://www.melocki.org.uk/salop/NeenSavage.html
This record related to the Lloyd-Baker family of Hardwicke Court states that "Deeds apart, relatively few papers of the Lloyd family have survived, documenting three generations of clergymen, Bishop William Lloyd, his son Chancellor William and grandson, John".
https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/dc0df15e-b4f2-41f7-a294-88c836ed9935
This is both a larger and I think a better version of this portrait than the one reproduced in Ingamells, which may be a reduced copy of it. Ideally, given the historical importance of the sitter, the Bewdley picture would be cleaned, restored and put on display.
The will of the widow Joanna Soley, dated November 19, 1828, includes the picture “Bishop Lloyd”. She bequeathed it to "Thomas Lloyd Baker of Hardwicke Court in the County of Gloster Esq". She lived in Sambourne, Kidderminster.
On Ancestry, the "Charlton Family Tree" shows his dates as November 14, 1807 – December 10, 1886.
Note that, in the first codicil to her will, dated August 29, 1837, she also bequeathed him the "family pictures".
Title: Will of Joanna Soley, Widow of Kidderminster, Worcestershire
Catalogue reference: PROB 11/1981/294
Covering dates: 23 June 1843
In the Worcestershire Exhibition, 1882, there were two portraits of Bishop William Lloyd.
https://www.google.ca/books/edition/Worcestershire_Exhibition_1882/HDUWAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0
The first portrait (no. 118) was in the collection of the Bishop of Worcester. It is likely the painting from 1699 https://bit.ly/3pcABoP that Osmund noted in his comment 12/08/2022 13:40.
The second portrait (no. 130) was owned by the Misses Lunn, Hampton, Evesham. The Misses Lloyd were possibly Hannah (1858–1949) and Martha Lunn (b. 1861) who appear in Bromsgrove in the 1939 England Wales Register. They were the daughters of William Lunn and his wife Sarah Lunn (née Ashmore)(b. 1826). Google maps shows that Worcester is between Bewdley and Evesham and that Evesham is 31 miles from Bewdley. Bromsgrove is north-east of Worcester and 13 miles from Bewdley.
For the exhibition, [Thomas] Barwick Lloyd Baker [of Hardwicke House] provided robes worn by Bishop Lloyd (no. 69 and no. 70) but not paintings.
I have ordered the wills of Hannah and Martha Lunn.
The iconography of Bishop Lloyd is long and complex – see the attached list (1) of known portraits from the NPG’s Later Stuart Portraits Catalogue [hereafter “NPG”], together with the likenesses given in his ODNB entry [“DNB”]. Though the former is more extensive and detailed, there are extra things listed by the DNB that may be significant in the context of our portrait. I have highlighted in yellow those entries that are of most interest to us, as they concern the portraits that are, or may be by or after Seeman.
NPG gives full details of the reduced Hartlebury Castle version that is in Ingamells (1981), but on the face of it no others – unsurprising, as it was John Ingamells who wrote the NPG Later Stuarts catalogue. Hartlebury *is* in fact on Art UK – but it seems only that part of it (the north service wing) that houses the Worcestershire County Museum. This is essentially a folk museum, and holds just half a dozen portraits, none of them apparently relating to the bishops who lived there: https://bit.ly/3AlI6QN. However, a photograph of one of the state rooms here https://bit.ly/3w3t1Rj shows a number of Episcopal portraits still in situ, and I rather think the smaller one top right is the portrait in question (i.e. the Ingamells/Hartlebury version of ours). Attached (2) shows a de-skewed and slightly enlarged view of it with the state room photo, while (3) places it on top of the Ingamells illustration posted by Miles Barton (which I’ve also played with to try and minimize the skew of the image).
The next thing to note in NPG is that in 1898 there were *two* portraits of Bishop Lloyd at Hardwicke Court – one of them doubtless the one Marcie found had been left to the Lloyd-Bakers by Joanna Soley in 1828. Although we don’t know what type these were, it certainly seems possible that at a later date (post-1898) the family decided one portrait of him was enough, and gave one of them (perhaps the larger) to Bewdley Museum. It should be noted, though, that while Bewdley is close to Hartlebury Castle, it is a lot further (nearly 50 miles) from Hardwicke Court. This must slightly lower the chances of the Lloyd-Bakers being the donor of our portrait.
Anyway, I’ve emailed the head of the family to ask if they can shed any light on this, and in particular to see if they still have one or both of their portraits.
Incidentally, there is a very full and detailed account of the Lloyd-Baker family here https://bit.ly/3JR72ml. However, the Lloyd part of it only begins with Mary Lloyd (1710-85), grand-daughter of our sitter Bishop William Lloyd, who married into the Baker family in 1745.
The Bewdley Museum Trust was founded in 1969, and the museum opened in 1972. It acquired the Kidderminster Collection in 1990 upon the closure of Kidderminster Museum and Art Gallery, which had been founded in 1929. How close is Hardwicke Court to Kidderminster?
Moving on to DNB, this gives a version of the (or a) Seeman portrait reproduced in Tindal Hart’s 1952** biography of William Lloyd: https://bit.ly/3SSavoQ. The illustration is sadly not visible in the snippet view, but it seems unlikely to be the one at Hartlebury as it’s listed as in a ‘private collection’ – it may therefore be a third version of the portrait, and I will try and get to the BL this week to look at the book. DNB also has another unspecified portrait listed as ‘priv. coll.’ – perhaps they are the two that are/were at Hardwicke Court?
[**The author’s preface is dated Dec 1948]
Bewdley is pretty much adjacent to Kidderminster, so much the same distance from Hardwicke - see attached map.
Osmund, as shown in the attached snippet, that portrait of William Lloyd in Tindal Hart’s 1952 book seems to be the one at Hartlebury.
For the record, Mr. William Broster of Southampton (d. November 26, 1880) stated in a letter published in 1881 (attached) that he owned the original Closterman portrait of Bishop Lloyd. I have ordered his will but the portrait was likely bequeathed to his son John Broster, who lived with him.
Ah, well done for extracting that, Marcie. With public transport strikes due later this week in London you have saved me a difficult journey to St Pancras.
I think your conclusions about which Lloyd portraits were exhibited at the Worcestershire Exhibition in 1882 may be adrift. Although the first (#118 - lent by the Bp of Worcester) has the date '1699' in the catalogue, this is misleading. If you look at the many other bishops' portraits in the catalogue ( this copy on Archive.org is easier to use and extract from https://bit.ly/3QoCcDP ) you'll see that the vast majority have a year after the name, but this is in every case (bar one error?) when they became bishop – not I think something written on the painting or even a guess at the portrait's date. It is unlikely, too, though not impossible, that a portrait in the possession of the Bishop of Worcester in 1882 would now be in the Lambeth Palace collection (i.e. the Archbishop of Canterbury’s), unless Hartlebury had been stripped of its Episcopal portraits after 2008. This seems not to be the case, and my guess is that the portraits still belong to the See, but may be on long-term loan to the Hartlebury Castle Preservation Trust.
In fact the 1882 exhibited portrait #118 is almost certainly the reduced version by Seeman illustrated in Ingamells (1981), Tindall Hart (1952) and also in J. Nankivell, ‘The Collection of Portraits ... at Hartlebury Castle’ (1953); there is no hint anywhere in the literature that there was ever more than one portrait of Lloyd at Hartlebury, and I believe it is still there. See also https://bit.ly/3Al6WjK.
Since they're unlikely to have exhibited two variations of the same portrait, that lent by the Misses Lunn (#130) was probably of a different type - indeed, NPG states that it was a version of the Lambeth Palace portrait. However, no supporting evidence for the assertion is given, and it could just as well have been our portrait or another one altogether.
I am hoping to get to the Heinz Archive tomorrow, and there may well be more information and images there that will clarify all this.
Thanks for the great explanation, Osmund.
You're very kind, Marcie, but as ever we build on the work of others.
Earlier today, I received the wills of Martha Lunn (1861–1942) and her sister Hannah Lunn (1858–1949). Martha bequeathed cash to her niece Florence Mary Newman (née Lunn)(1879–1971) and the residue of her estate to Hannah. Hannah bequeathed cash, a tea set, and paintings (of "Ann and Joseph Mascall") to two nieces and a nephew and the residue of her estate to Florence Mary Newman. I have ordered Florence's will.
Martha and Hannah also had older siblings named Emily (1849–1933), Sarah (1851–1936), Thomas Lunn (1852–1916)(father of Florence Mary Newman) and William (b. 1854). I have ordered the will of Thomas Lunn and that of his wife Mary Myott Lunn (née Gaunt)(1851–1928).
Some dates are from Ancestry: the "Hall Family Tree Fradswell, Staffordshire, England" and the "Murphy Family Tree".
The book at the link, ‘Descent and Alliances of Croslegh: Or Crossle, Or Crossley, of Scaitcliffe; and Coddington of Oldbridge; and Evans, of Eyton Hall’, from 1904, mentions portraits of Bishop Lloyd in the section "Lloyd, of Henblas" (extract attached).
https://www.google.ca/books/edition/Descent_and_Alliances_of_Croslegh/5vE7AAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0
I finally found the pedigree of Bishop Lloyd on pages 39 and 40 of this book. Page 40 is attached.
https://tinyurl.com/37e6d33n
In my post of 13/08/2022 01:54, the obituary from 1761 was for Elizabeth Soley (née Lloyd).
***
I have attached the notice regarding Joanna Skey's marriage to John Soley (junior)(November 6, 1800) and the notice of her death (March 24, 1843) at the age of 96. Note that her entry on the 1841 Census shows her age as 80 (the Census site indicates that "ages over 15 were rounded to the nearest 5 years").
The will of Joanna's husband John Soley (d. September 25, 1826) does not mention pictures.
Title: Will of John Soley of Kidderminster, Worcestershire
Catalogue reference: PROB 11/1719/92
Date: 04 December 1826
I could not find his father John's will.
***
The attached snippet from Ingamells shows that, in 1785, a man named John Soley presented the Enoch Seeman portrait of Bishop Lloyd discussed above to Hartlebury Castle.
Earlier today, I received three wills (see my comment of 16/08/2022 22:46). The will of Florence Mary Newman dated October 19, 1961, mentions dozens of items but no paintings. The will of Thomas Lunn dated March 18, 1911, does not mention any specific items. The will of Mary Myott Lunn dated July 20, 1922, with codicil dated November 16, 1926, mentions dozens of items but no paintings.
This discussion asks, “Could this be one of the Bishops of Worcester?”
The question was effectively answered on the first day of the discussion by Miles Barton (12/08/2022), who identified that the features in our portrait match a head-and-shoulders portrait of William Lloyd by Enoch Seeman at Hartlebury Castle which is signed and dated 1714.
Subsequent posts by Mark, Osmund and Marcie usefully address questions of attribution and fill in a family details.
SITTER: In my opinion we can say with some confidence that the portrait represents William Lloyd (1627-1717), who was Bishop of Worcester. So in that sense we have answered the discussion question.
ARTIST: The attribution is trickier. It may be by Enoch Seeman the Elder or by his son, Enoch Seeman the Younger. Looking at their work, I don’t think our picture is bad enough to be by Seeman the Elder. Nor does it fit comfortably with Seeman the Younger’s style, as Miles points out. It could be by some other artist altogether, whose work was then copied in 1714 by Seeman the Younger (see first paragraph above). So I sense that the current attribution, Unknown artist, could be left as it is or modified to Unknown British artist.
Based on the above post, I am now recommending as group leader for 18th century portraits that this discussion be closed. The identification should be amended to William Lloyd (1627-1717), Bishop of Worcester and the artist left as Unknown unless the collection prefers the designation, Unknown British artist.
Thank you, Jacob. The collection has been contacted.