The full description of the pamphlet that the sitter is holding is Declaration of Rights in Anno Regni Gulielmi et Mariæ Regis & Reginæ Angliæ, Scotia, Franciæ & Hiberniæ, Primo. London: Charles Bill and Thomas Newcomb, 1689.

'The Laws of Nevis' relate to the British West Indies colonies, of which the island of Nevis was one. The book depicted could be a copy of the "Laws of Nevis (Acts of Assembly, passed in the island of Nevis) 1664–1739 (1740)".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevis

The juxtaposition of the Bill of Rights (which not only addressed the settling of the succession of the Crown, but which also declared the rights and liberties of the Crown's subjects), with the 'Laws of Nevis', could have a tie in with matters concerning slavery. Perhaps the sitter was an advocate for the anti-slavery movement, in which case there could be a connection to the Mountravers Plantation Community (1734 - 1834), the history of which is presented in detail here:

https://bit.ly/2OZMZrQ

Can anyone tell from the sitter's jacket the era from which he came?

It is worth bearing in mind that the US politician and statesman Alexander Hamilton (1755 - 1804) was born in Charlestown, on the island of Nevis, and was active in ending the legality of the international slave trade. Perhaps there is a connection to the sitter through his influence.

Looking at the style of the coat - the double row of metal buttons, sliding button holes and a full neck collar, this would be around 1805 if he was up to date on fashion.
If the coat is full length front and back with no tail, it would be classified as colonial style which maintained it's fashion status until around 1820. It's a shame we can't see the cuffs or length of the coat.

Drawing your attention to another discussion which includes this portrait:

https://www.artuk.org/artdetective/discussions/discussions/who-are-the-artist-and-sitter-of-an-unknown-young-royal-navy-lieutenant/group/military-history

The Watsons business included trade with the West Indies. They had their own ship “William and Clement” ( or maybe “Clement and William” ) which sank off the Bamburgh coast in the 1790s. An Uncle of Dorothy Yelloly Watson was Joseph Yelloly who captained the “Friendship” to and from the West Indies. Might this have a connection to the pamphlets the sitter is reading?

If the sitter was up to date with the fashions the timeframe would be correct as William would have been 23 years in 1805.
Can you comment on another portrait which might be related? I think this is Williams brother Clement Chatto Watson 1788-1814- a Wine Merchant.
http://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/1230236

Comment on the fashion in the portrait I have noted above I mean, thankyou Angela.

Thank you Patty for noting the previous discussion regarding this portrait amongst a group of five in the same frames.
The Watson family seems to have been dismissed in the discussion you have noted, concentrating on distant relatives of the Adye and Payne families instead. I was unable to comment on that discussion as it had been closed when I came across it.

I first became aware of the Cragside portraits in 2008. At that time some descriptions and timeframes differed to what is attributed to them now.
I would like to comment on each portrait separately, hopefully providing information and sources which show the likelihood that these are Watson family portraits formally in the possession of William and Dorothy Yelloly Watson and depicting their four sons who were first cousins to Lord Armstrongs' brother in law William Henry Watson. It is worth noting the portraits of Wm and Dorothy have been identified by a label on the reverse ( signed by Joseph Yelloly Watson) and are in the Cragside Collection. This would not have been the case until after 1888 when 'Watson family pictures' are mentioned in the Will of the couples Grandson and family representative Joseph Yelloly Watson 1818-1888.

http://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/1230235

This portrait is now titled C E Adye. When I first happened upon it it was 'An unknown Gentleman, possibly C E Adye.' Despite numerous enquires a man named C E Adye cannot be found or placed.
I think this is Adam Yelloly 1741-1810, brother of Dorothy Yelloly Watson. He lived in close proximity to his sisters Watson family, a Gentleman Batchelor he left a considerable fortune to his two surviving sisters, £10000 each and had no other nieces or nephews apart from the Watsons. Adams age fits with the timeframe attributed to this portrait 1770-1799. Can Angela comment on the fashion of this gentleman please?

http://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/1230237

This portrait now has the date 1770-1799 but when I first saw it the date was 1800-1820. According to Angelas comment above it is possible it could be c1805. William Watson 1782-1864 was the eldest son of Wm and Dorothy, first cousin to Wm Henry Watson 1797-1860. He studied Law, married a Heiress with considerable property in Essex and did not practice Law. His descendants are known to have kept in close contact with the Watson-Armstrongs into the 20th Century. I have been told there is a photograph of this Williams Greatgranddaughter Mabel Yelloly Watson 1882- 1970 in the Cragside collection. Please consider the family photograph I have supplied of this man, although much older and poor quality ( the original photograph was very small and not in my possession).

http://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/1230236

This portrait has the date 1700-1799 attributed to it however when I first saw this portrait the date was 1800-1820. This could be the second son Clement Chatto Watson 1788-1814 who was a Wine Merchant in London. Can you comment on his fashion please?

http://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/1230234

Again the date was previously 1800-1820, now stating 1770-1799.
It appears that this young man is a Lieutenant with one epaulette? John Watson 1791-1858 was the third son, a Lieutenant in the Army I have not been able to identify his regiment. He married and settled in Ireland in 1815, the marriage record calling him an Officer, his sons marriage record in Australia also referring to him as Officer. He is listed as a subscriber (Lieut. John Watson, Ireland) to the book by Wm Henry Watson in 1825 "A treatise on the law of arbitration & awards.." along with his surviving eldest brother William Watson, Essex.

http://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/1230232

This portrait now titled "An Unknown Young Royal Naval Lieutenant, possibly William Henry, Duke of Clarence, later William IV (1765 - 1837)" the identification is discussed in the thread noted above by Patty. The previous date attributed to it was 1800-1820 it now states 1785-1786.
Joseph Yelloly Watson 1793-1818 became a Cadet in the East India Company in 1812. He trained at the East India Company Military Seminary at Addiscombe before travelling to India where he died from Yellow Fever in 1818. There is no mention of the EIC in the previous thread, can anyone comment on this possibilty? My own research indicates that the uniform of the EIC was very similar to that of the Royal Navy until c1820.

I am sorry this comment is so lengthy. I will add another comment including resources and information I have found in relation to the Watson family.

Good evening Alison, No apology needed! We're extremely grateful to you and others for taking the trouble to add your substantial research, and look forward to your further information and ideas on the Watson family portraits.

Alison, re the RN Lieutenant portrait that was the subject of the previous discussion (and the age & identity of which clearly affects your hypothesis): you seem to be suggesting that Pieter van der Merwe was mistaken to say in his intro that the sitter's uniform is that of a Royal Navy lieutenant between 1767 & 1787, "down to the detail of the Tudor Rose pattern buttons". See https://bit.ly/2CYwpTq . In your alternative scenario you would like this to be an East India Co one of post-1812 instead – a pretty dramatic reassessment, if I may say so, and it might be wise to google Pieter's name before proceeding along this line. I doubt there is anyone in the country who knows more about British Naval uniforms than he does, and if the EIC was not mentioned in the other thread it was doubtless because it wasn’t relevant.

I'm wondering if you haven’t got a bit confused between the HEIC's military and naval fighting services. What I've read suggests that it was the uniforms of the *naval* HEIC (the ‘Bombay Marine’) that may have been similar to those of the Royal Navy – but Joseph Yelloly Watson was surely not in the naval service, but the military? The HEIC cadet records suggest he was accepted for service in the Bengal (Native) Infantry – as far as I know the EIC’s infantry European officers at this time wore red coats, and I think the styles were much like those of the British Army. Do you know which regiment he joined? Here, for what it’s worth, is a young officer of the 4th Bengal Native Infantry in 1810 – no colour, alas, but the style is clear enough (and very different): https://bit.ly/2PMKXIy . And on Art UK there are portraits of many other officers of various ranks in the BNI, and of various dates from 1799 onwards, pretty much all of them wearing red coats in styles similar to those of the contemporary British Army: https://bit.ly/2EBC2bZ

My own feeling is still that this group of portraits at Cragside is of an earlier generation to the one you believe. The wig shapes with tight side curls of all these sitters shout 1770s-80s (or earlier) at me, even without much naval or military uniform knowledge. I really think the date suggested by Angela is much too late – very few young men wore wigs by 1805, and even most older gentlemen had ceased to powder their hair by then (though some still wore it ‘en queue’). The British Army, specifically, discontinued hair powder in 1796, and the queue went in 1800. Furthermore I have a feeling that the small collar turned down over the stock worn by three of the sitters (including ours) is a style that was long gone by the turn of the century.

In relation to my initial query as to the possibility of the man in my photograph being the same man as the unknown sitter in the portrait I have attached a visual of the two images together for comparison.
There is also the entry from the NT publication of 2008 ‘Cragside List of Pictures and Sculpture’ which states the five portraits were considered a group because of the same frames, possibly Adyes, Paynes or Watsons. There is an image of the five portraits placed together showing the frames.
I have attached a copy of a Watson family tree c1860 which I obtained from the Armstrong Papers at Tyne and Wear Archives and Museum, Newcastle. The document is interesting as it does not include all family members but does name the four brothers who may be sitters of the portraits. One brother is incorrectly named as Adam (d India), his name was Joseph Yelloly Watson. Adam was the name of Dorothy Yelloly’s brother though who might be the oldest sitter in the group. The family tree notes some children of the eldest son Wm, notably his eldest surviving son Joseph Yelloly 1818-1888.
In the Will of JY Watson in 1888 family pictures are bequeathed to his eldest son, also JY Watson 1851-1918 who is the father of Mabel Y Watson 1882-1970. There is a photograph of Mabel in the Cragside Collection. Family members of the Watson cousins are also noted as guests at the wedding of Susan Dorothea Fitzpatrick Watson 1873-1961 ( sister of Baron Armstrong of Bamburgh and Cragside) in 1903, indicating the relationship between the two Watson families continued into the 20th century.
In 1903 the youngest JYW, a Stockbroker, became bankrupt. Could this event have been a catalyst for the family pictures to have been re-homed at Cragside? It is known that many of Cragsides original artworks were sold c1909 so there was reason and sufficient space to acquire other artworks around that time, particularly if they were free.
It should be remembered that the portraits of the parents of the four brothers are certainly in the Cragside collection today.
Despite attempting to research the Military life of the two youngest brothers I have found that extremely difficult. I have a copy of Joseph Yelloly Watsons application as a Cadet into the EIC Military Seminary dated 1812. I also have a registered copy of his Will dated Feb 1818. It describes him as an “Ensign in the Bengal Native Infantry, army ensign of East Indies.”
I have a copy of Eleanor Weatherleys Diary 1804/05 where the Watsons are mentioned almost daily. It states John Watson was in a Volunteer Militia in the Bamburgh region at that time. Would that be correct at age 14? He is noted as an Officer at his marriage in Ireland in 1815, the only reference I have of him as a Lieutenant is from the subscribers list in WH Watsons book of 1825. I had identified him as the sitter in the red coat because the Armstrong family tree noted he was “in the Army” which I associated with the redcoat.
Reference to the Tudor buttons has really thrown me though and I look forward to some discussion of all the portraits in relation to this branch of the Watson family.
I have also attached an obituary from the London Illustrated News March 1860 for WH Watson, Lord Armstrongs brotherinlaw.

Osmund Bullock, I have just read your comment and do feel it a bit condescending. I am not suggesting anyone else is wrong as I am no authority myself. I did state that Watsons seem to have been dismissed and would like them considered. I am a descendant of this family though and have attempted to research them thoroughly from a great distance, no easy task. Yes I would dearly love my hypothesis to be correct. I did in fact help the NT correctly identify and name the portraits of William and Dorothy Yelloly Watson by providing them with my research and correctly transcribing the handwritten label on the back of Williams portrait. I do hope Pieter van der Merwe contributes to this discussion as well because I would like to learn all I can. I will take the time to consider your comments and do some research, thankyou. Did you compare my family photograph to the portrait above?

All I can add here is that I think I have identified the 'nautical' uniform of the young man who I thought might just be Prince William correctly - though would not claim the sort of expertise credited to me on naval dress: I simply have ready access to good sources that compensate for an ever-reliable 'forgettery' on the details. But I'm afraid that does not carry the Watson question forward (and certainly won't if the East India connection was an army one).

I am sorry to have annoyed you, Alison Elliott. After many days of research I took some trouble to point out the flaws in your argument (or a lynch-pin of it) in what I thought was a tactful manner, but clearly I pitched it wrong. If you read some of the other discussions on here you will see that soundly-evidenced views are often exchanged quite robustly; but that is not your way, and I apologize. Though there are a number of other points I was going to make, with evidence in support, they all point in the same direction. I have no desire to cause further upset, so I think it's best if I leave it at that.

Can anyone identify the artist as the portrait is of a competence sufficient to find who painted this work?
Does the Bill of Rights suggest that this was painted in the 1790s?

Osmund I had confused the military with the naval services, not even being aware they were seperate. JYW was an Ensign of the Chumparan Light Infantry. I must admit I had not even heard of the HEIC until I found his application many years ago and obviously have not researched them very well.
It seems then that he would have worn a red coat as part of his uniform, so in my hypothesis he could be the man in the red coat and not the midshipman.
I had a preconceived idea that a redcoat was a British Soldier (I'm from the colonies..) and had attributed the red to the brother John 'in the army, settled in Ireland'
I have read some about wigs now and do understand where the timeframe of a previous generation comes from.
I do appreciate your comments and would like to hear more.

I found Pieter on utube introducing the Capt Bligh Exhibition.

It’s all right, Alison, I've calmed down a bit now! I'm sorry, I rather over-reacted there – communicating online with people you don't know can be a tricky business, and it's easy to misconstrue the spirit things are written in. I have no personal stake or axe to grind about these five portraits, I am only trying to establish the truth - they are a very interesting group, clearly connected, and are deserving of the attention they are getting. Of which more in due course...

Martin, the Declaration of Rights which our sitter is holding was published in 1689, on the accession to the throne of William and Mary, and which the English parliament introduced as a precondition to their being crowned as King and Queen. Why, I humbly ask, does this document suggest that the portrait might have been painted in the 1790s?

I do believe that the key to identifying this work lies in the relationship between the Declaration of Rights and the Laws of Nevis. Finding a connection between them and any of the families associated to Cragside must surely warrant the most thorough investigation.

Think of what was happening in Ireland

The binding of the book below the Bill of Rights has lettering on the spine. Can it be deciphered?
The career and opinions of the Irish nationalist Wolfe Tone [1763-98] may be relevant.

Martin, as was posted above in the comment that launched this discussion, the letters on the spine could read as ‘LAWS OF NEVIS’. However, in the discussion on a different painting from the Cragside collection it was previously written that the spine read ‘LAWS OF EVID[ENCE]’. It would greatly help if Cragside could send a hi-res shot of this portion of the painting to resolve the matter of which interpretation is correct.

Thank you, Kieran, for reminding me of the start of this discussion. It is certainly likely that there is a political dimension to this portrait
The French Revolution , a century after the Bill of Rights, gave rise to a considerable increase of political pamphlets and discussions of all kinds, both from the radicals and conservatives.

Art UK may be able to provide a close-up of the relevant area including the book spine from their higher-res version of the image – any chance, Marion?

Meanwhile I am attaching the best tweaked close-up I could manage electronically from the public version – to my eye it certainly looks much more like ‘NEVIS’ than ‘EVID’. This would be surprising if it were not for the fact that three of the four families suggested elsewhere as those from which the portraits might have come (Adye, Payne and Willett, who all intermarried – the other is Watson) were wealthy residents of the island of St Kitts – and St Kitts is immediately adjacent to and virtually contiguous with Nevis. Can this *really* be just a coincidence?

How the Watsons and Adyes come into the family tree of the Lords Armstrong of Cragside can be seen here: https://bit.ly/2D0O39a . Winifreda Adye (1860-1814), who married the first Lord Armstrong of the second creation, was the eldest daughter of the soldier-artist Gen. Sir John Miller Adye (1819-1900).The Cragside collection includes numerous items relating to both father and daughter, and one of our group of five portraits ( https://bit.ly/2yA4a9S ) is apparently inscribed somewhere with the so far elusive name ‘C. E. Adye’ – we have previously asked for more information about this inscription, and preferably an image in case it might have been misread, but without any response. I would like to repeat that request.

The Adye/Payne/Willett relationship was discussed at length in the previous thread, but is so complex and multi-layered that I’m afraid I (and I suspect others) got lost first time round. Patty Macsisak made most of the running then, and came up with a large number of suggestions as to possible sitters in our group of portraits – some of them I now believe are right...but I don’t think this is one of them! In the next few days I will try and put together a tree (mainly based on the one here https://bit.ly/2Sj3MES ) showing how the three St Kitts families relate – without one it’s very hard to get your head round it. But Sir John Miller Adye (above) was in turn the son of Major James Pattison Adye (d.1831), who was the youngest child of Major Stephen Payne Adye (c.1742-1794). The last has been suggested as a candidate for our sitter – although a Gunner (like all the soldier Adyes), he served as deputy judge-advocate-general in N. America, and wrote a highly-regarded ‘Treatise on Courts-Martial’ published in 1769. But for reasons I will go into tomorrow I believe it is actually a portrait of his younger brother, the Crown advocate Abraham Charles Adye (d.1815), later Solicitor-Gen. & Attorney-Gen. of Granada. If I’m right there is a link to the early career of Lord Nelson, which should get Pieter interested again! In fact it is possible that the portrait relates directly to the connection ...but that hinges entirely on the book’s title.

If it does indeed read ‘Laws of Nevis’, we have the eagle-eyed Alison to thank for the reading, along with Kieran who has identified a probable book bearing the right name. Alison didn’t develop things along the Nevis line, as her focus was on the Watson family; but like Kieran I think that’s the direction that will bear fruit.

For the discussion text I decided not to rely on the existing record of this lettering (National Trust and Art UK) but to read the PCF image myself in close-up. It was immediately clear that the spine of the book did not read 'Evid[ences]': there is a clear 'EVIS', no letter 'D' and no further lettering below. The initial 'N' is indistinct but I inferred it from the twin uprights in the shape and knowing the place Nevis existed (so it was a possible book title, but I didn't know of the book). I added a question mark after it for safety, hoping that others could identify it.

I attach the PCF close-ups of the book spine and the pamphlet for others to see what they think. I should be able to attach such close-ups as a matter of routine from now on for some collections and I hope to make this standard practice. Without access to the artworks themselves, it's pretty much essential.

Marion, many thanks for posting the close-up images. I attach a tweaked version of consideration. I think that it is very clear that the title of the book in 'Laws of Nevis'.

Thank you also for the second attachment. I can now see more clearly the inscribed words Magna Carta.

Working out how these three elements - the Declaration of Rights, the Laws of Nevis and Magna Carta - are connected is vital to the unraveling of the painting's identity. That there is a direct Adye/Payne/Willett connection to the Caribbean and St. Kitts, as outlined by Osmond above, must lend further credence to the notion that the island of Nevis is central to this discussion.

It should also be noted that in the preface to his 1862 (2nd edition) publication of the compilation and arrangement of the 'Laws of Nevis (1681 - 1861)', its author, Hastings Charles Huggins, states that "There has been no compilation, revision, or systematic arrangement of the Laws of Nevis since the authorised edition of 1774." Should the book featured be a bound copy of the 1774 edition, the painting must date for sometime after that year.

Additionally, and returning to my original suggestion that there might be a connection to issues surrounding slavery, it can be seen from the two University College London links below that in 1756 and 1803 members of both the Willett and Adye family were involved in the Nevis slave plantation know as the Morning Star estate.

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/estate/view/3122

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/2146644923

See also the most interesting connection to the theme of the Rights of Man in the biographical entry below to John Willett Stanley (1740 - 1799). See also that of the connected family member John Willett Willett (formerly Adye) (1745 - 1815), both men having been members of the House of Commons.

https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1790-1820/member/stanley-john-1740-99

https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1790-1820/member/willett-john-willett-1745-1815

https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1790-1820/member/payne-sir-ralph-1739-1807

See also here for connections to the Payne, Willett and Adye families:

http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00075409/00002/113j

In fact, much of the history, including genealogical charts, for the Willett, Adye and Payne families of St. Kitt's etc. can be found in this volume:

http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00075409/00002/2j

Ooops, my apologies Osmund. My last two links lead to the same book as you referenced in an earlier posting.

No problem, Kieran - better twice than not at all. I'm not sure that you did attach the tweaked version of the title, but attached is/are my own one(s) instead. I agree that there is now no serious doubt that the book is 'The Laws of Nevis'. I couldn’t see 'Magna Carta' for ages...until I realized it was the other way up! I think it may be a petimento showing through – the artist or sitter wanted to show some great historical declaration of British rights to go with something representative of contemporary local law, but the decision about which (and its orientation) changed en route.

Marion, thank you (not for the first time) for those images. I’m sorry, I seem to have misunderstood who had deciphered the book title – I thought the new reading was part of Alison's intro, not an addition from you. So the congratulations pass, I think, in your direction.

Through the link below, it can be seen from the index of the 1740 edition of the 'Laws of Nevis' that a large numbers of Acts deal with issues pertaining to the management of "Negroes, and other slaves", such as, in 1713, 'An Act for the better suppressing the Insolencies (sic) of Negroes, and other Slaves; and the preventing their running away with Boats, Canoes, or Barklogs', or the very many acts, between the years 1700 and 1740, "for raising a Poll Tax on Negroes, and other Slaves, belonging to the Plantations and Inhabitants of this Island of Nevis".

https://bit.ly/2z2FJBo


Again, could slavery be the core subject in this painting?

Plus tweaked version attached

On reflection, the link to the attached book is to a volume entitled "Acts of Assembly, passed in the Island of Nevis, from 1664 to 1739", but which within is referred to as "The Laws of Nevis". The 1774 edition of the Laws, referred to by Hastings Charles Huggins, was either published by the press of Thomas Howe, government printer at Basseterre on St Christopher's Island (later St' Kitt's), or by his son Thomas, who continued the trade.

I'm afraid I think the slavery issue is a red herring, and referring to the "the theme of the Rights of Man" misleading. The truth is that at this time (1770s-80s) in the slave-owning colonies (and to a large extent in Britain), the vast majority of people differentiated in a way we find hard to understand between the rights of white Englishmen and those of black Africans. Moreover to the middle and upper classes this was not really a matter of the rights of the ‘common man’ – it was much more to do with what they saw as their rights against authority and especially the Crown (as Magna Carta had been). Such evidence as there is suggests that the Adyes, their relations and the other planters of St Kitts and Nevis had no problem at all with slavery other than the logistical – and especially, as you show, the tendency of their slaves to rebel, run away and otherwise make a nuisance of themselves. Their main concern was the price of sugar and the profitability of their estates – and their right not to have that profitability interfered with by the British Government or anyone else.

Certainly I can find no evidence any of them were abolitionists or in any ways sympathetic to the cause. As the History of Parliament biog you link to relates, a Willett cousin lawyer and later MP John Stanley of Nevis, St Kitts, etc (John Willett Stanley was actually his son) “spoke strongly and at very great length” in 1791 against the abolition of the slave trade; and in 1796 wrote, “What do your Priestleys, your Wilberforces and all these gentry think now of their Rights of Man, and the levelling of all distinctions?”.

Osmund, what other theme would you deduce from the obviously intentional inclusion in this portrait of these three elements of the Laws of Nevis, the Magna Carta, and the Declaration of Rights? Although it was an initial thought, I am not exclusively suggesting that they represent an abolitionist's stance, more that they address some aspect of the slavery question. Given your rather chilling description of Willett/Stanley family's attitude, it might well be that the sitter was depicted as someone who wished to defend the slave trade and its beneficial implications for the family or families involved. Have you another suggestion as to how these elements interrelate, or should they be ignored as immaterial to the portrait's intended message? If not slavery, what else is likely or possible?

It is no doubt coincidence that Cragside is also the home to John Bell's 'A Daughter of Eve', which was exhibited at the RA in 1853.

http://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/1228372

It's a good question, Kieran, and I fear the answer is equally chilling. For the wealthy sugar planters in the West Indies, and the lawyers who serviced them, their slaves were generally of no more status or significance than their farm animals: they were wholly irrelevant to any concepts of legal or moral rights, and nothing whatever to do with the Bill of Rights let alone Magna Carta.

I think our lawyer sitter is just displaying his expertise and pride in the law and its most-celebrated British historical roots. He may have just been called to the bar, or it may possibly relate to specific events in 1785 that I will come to when I have time - be patient! I don't think it would have occurred to him that there was anything strange or contradictory in his dedication to legal process and its (theoretical) defence of the individual, while his profession and his own family denied any participation whatever in that process to those they considered quite simply as sub-human.

Yes, the statue is probably coincidence - a product of another age, and Lord Armstrong doubtless supported its anti-(American) slavery message. Would he have known of his forebears' deep involvement in it? I doubt it...but even if he were, I think we were more forgiving 150 years ago of what our ancestors had got up to - "the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there."

And yet out of that very distant colony came Alexander Hamilton, who was active in the ending of the international slave trade. And also at the time of, or just before, this painting's likely execution, between 1775 and 1783 came the American Revolution, followed swiftly by the French Revolution from 1789 to 1799. Surely the thoughts that spurred on these events must have effected the likes of our young sitter, even if this work dates from a little later, c. 1805 as suggested above.

More specifically to those three associated elements, it would seem strange to me that, whatever about referencing the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Rights, a volume so obscure as the Laws of Nevis would have been used by a young lawyer to, as you say above, display his expertise and pride in the law. He surely could have chosen many other more well-known legal publications to convey that message.

Given the evidently close links with the various families associated with Cragside (through the presence of their portraits there) and their well-documented connections to St. Kitt's and Nevis, at a time when they could not possibly have avoided an involvement with slavery (the benefits from which must have flowed back to these families in England), I still believe that the three elements depicted in the painting must hold a key to resolving the identity of its sitter.

Well, we’ll just have to agree to differ on that, Kieran, though personally I can't see anything strange (and therefore more deeply significant) in showing a book called the Laws of Nevis in your portrait if Nevis is where you practise law (or are about to). I’ve a lot more research to share on this, but it’s complex and requires further work to put into presentable form.

Meanwhile, two more close-up requests for Marion. I’ve just been looking carefully at another of the Cragside portrait group, the one called “C E Adye” ( https://bit.ly/2yA4a9S ), and the subject of previous requests for information from the Collection on the identification / inscription. It is a long shot, but after tweaking it a bit I think there may just possibly be something legible on one side or other of the sheet of paper on which the sitter is writing. Could we perhaps see a high-res of that area, please? Similarly (but even less likely), another portrait in the group ( https://bit.ly/2qrkp4O ) shows the youthful sitter reading a large (?)account book or journal – I suspect there is nothing in particular there, but just in case would a high-res of the open page also be possible?

And Marion, while you are attending to Osmond's request, please be so kind as to send an image of the "C. E. Adye" inscribed name as is to be found on, I presume, the back of the work.

Osmund, please find attached high-res images of C. E. Adye's piece of paper and the book held by an unknown young man, but I'm afraid they don't show anything.

The paintings on Art UK may be found here:
https://bit.ly/2qrkp4O
https://bit.ly/2yA4a9S

Kieran, it will be good to see an image of the name 'C. E. Adye', wherever it is, but that will have to wait until someone at Cragside can follow this up. For now, the agreement is that we can run discussions about National Trust paintings on our website, adding high-resolution images as necessary. They will respond after 3 months to a batch of updates that I am listing on their behalf and and to the discussions that are open. The NT curators have expressed great enthusiasm for Art Detective and want very much to participate, which is why they are trying out sending them batches of enquiries every three months, which I pre-sort into 'easy updates' and more complex queries that give rise to discussion, which might require research on their part. So they are very much engaged with the project but the answers (as far as they can give any) will come quarterly.

Marion, that is so interesting and encouraging to hear; thank you for negotiating and organizing it, you are a wonder. And thank you, too, for the rapidly-produced high-res details, even though in this case they are a disappointment.

A quick reminder that attachments requested for one painting within a discussion thread about another run the risk of being very hard to find again.

Rather than starting a new discussion about 'C. E. Adye', I will add the following question to the list being sent to the National Trust at the end of the year (Tim Williams, 30 May 2015: 'Could the collection kindly provide clarification on the source of information that identifies the sitter in this portrait as 'C. E. Adye'?)

Hello all,

My comment is not in regard to the painting above, but a painting of a woman I believe to be William Watson’s (1782-1864) wife, Elizabeth (Howard) Watson, 1787-1848, daughter of William Howard (1731-1809) and Elizabeth Brett (?-1787).

This small oil painting has been in my family for at least a hundred years. I could not decipher the scrawled writing on the back, until at last I managed to make out “Wm. Howard,” “Watson,” and “Northumberland.” Some persistent googling led me to Alison Eliot, the original poster, who seems to know a great deal about this family, and from her name, I found my way to this thread.

Briefly, the gown and general fashion sense of the piece seem consistent with Elizabeth (Howard) Watson’s dates.

And, after some more looking and learning about this couple, I now believe the torn note to read:

(illegible)…Watson
…[young]est daughter
[heiress of?] Wm. Howard
St Osyth-Essex
[marr]ied in 1815 William [Watson]
eldest son of
[Willi]am Watson who
[died in?] Adderstone [House?]
in Northumberland
in 1814

Anyone with thoughts on this is welcome to reply.

Alison, if you see this, I would particularly like to hear your first impressions.

Lastly, if the fact that this is a separate work of art breaks any major rules, I apologize in advance, and will withdraw the post.

With sincere thanks in advance.

L. S. Lawrence, welcome! Thank you for contacting us about your portrait, which you think may be the wife of our sitter, William Watson (1782–1864).

You are right that the purpose of Art Detective is to improve the records of artworks in UK public collections. We couldn’t have started a discussion about your painting, but we can include it because it’s highly relevant to our topic. Hopefully we can all benefit: this is an interesting new addition to the story.

We try to be inclusive: for example, we have a discussion on the website from Barnsley Archives (and of interest to The De Morgan Foundation) aimed at tracing Evelyn de Morgan’s copy of the portrait of ‘Robert and Elizabeth Buxton’ in the collection of Norfolk Museums. That copy is almost certainly in private ownership now, but the museum would welcome any news of it, especially in view of their longterm exhibition ‘A Family of Artists: The De Morgan Collection and Cannon Hall’ (Cannon Hall, until January 2021).

Thank you for the welcome, Marion! It’s a superb site/ forum.

And… It’s a fascinating thread so far.

I look forward to hearing whatever insights the collected wisdom of the group may generate.

Mr/Ms Lawrence, I am rather less sure than Marion of the relevance of your painting to this discussion - not least because I am quite certain that the man in our portrait is not William Watson (1782-1864), but someone of the previous generation! It should be clearly noted that WW was only ever a *suggested* identity for our sitter, he has never been "our sitter". And even if he might be, I'm not sure how your one would help us decide that either way. Anyway, I will happily follow the official, more inclusive view, and throw in a couple of things.

First and foremost, I am sure that your reading of the rear inscription, real and extrapolated, is spot on, and that your identification of the sitter is correct. The writing is indeed hard, but I can add one further possible word. I think the end of the top line reads 'J. Yelloly Watson' - presumably Joseph Yelloly Watson the second (1818-1888) who may well have owned the picture.

Re the rear inscription label, it looks to me as if the inscription continues to the left under the (largely removed) printed label and further gummed paper sheet on top - if you think you can do it carefully enough (if not, find a paper conservator), dampen with a cloth or sponge what remains of the printed label, leave it for a short while, then gently, a little at a time, try and ease it up using a thin palette knife/spatula (or unpointed knife). It will most probably come away quite easily, and the old ink handwriting beneath is unlikely to be affected. The key is to go slowly and patiently, dampening a bit more as needed. Don't panic if a brittle piece breaks off - slip any bits that do so into an envelope, they can be reconstructed later if needed.

The other point is about the part-removed printed label that was/is on top. Do you still have the removed part, or an image of it (always take photos before you mess with old labels)? It looks to me like a portrait artist's trade label, though the fact that it's it's on top of the handwriting may mean it was acquired when being framed (a framing business might well offer likenesses as well). Either way, if it's still extant it would be of great interest.

Sorry - on reflection, and looking again at your image, I'm not sure the writing does continue to the left underneath after all. If so please ignore my lengthy and irrelevant 'tips for label-removers'!

Hi, my transcript of the label-

Elizabeth Watson
Mother of J Yelloly Watson JP
of The Grange
Youngest daughter and
heiress of Wm Howard
of St Osyth Essex
married in 1815 William
Watson eldest son of
William Watson who
died at Adderstone
House Northumberland
in 1814.

Interestingly the portraits of William Watson and his wife Dorothy Yelloy which are in the Cragside collection also have labels on the back which are written by the same hand.
I do have copies of these labels but my computer crashed and now the hard drive I saved the images to will not open. I will have to delve through my mountain of paperwork to find them.

This transcript on the reverse of Williams portrait is on the Cragside Collection site-

Label on reverse: William Watson (eldest son of William Watson of Fenwick who was born in 1722 and died in 1808 & who was eldest son of Joseph Watson of Kyloe Northumberland, born in 1702 & died in 1778) – was born in 1757 and died at Adderstone House Northumberland 4 Aug 1814 aged 57. Married Jan 3 1782 Dorothy Yelloly daughter of Clement Yelloly of Ditchen, Northd. Their eldest son William born 1782 married Elizabeth Howard of St. Osyth & their eldest surviving son J. Yelloly Watson JP Thorpe Grange Es[sex].

I have found a way of contacting you LS Lawrence so that we can communicate easily.

I am disappointed that no comparison or reference seems to have been made in this discussion in relation to the family photograph which is attached to the initial query.

Dear Mr. Bullock,

First off, I appreciate the gesture of “inclusivity.” It was not required, but it does make a difference to me. So, again, a ‘thank you’ to you and everyone here.

Second, your concurrence with my reading of the cursive writing is a relief. At one point, I went so far as to place a photocopy of the note up against a window pane in bright sunlight, and was tracing the letters by hand to try and identify them “by feel.” At any rate, after I found that post by Alison, the OP, on another site with many of the same names and places and started researching the family in question, it all fell into place.

Third, I am extremely grateful to you for just now unlocking one of the final mysteries for me: that otherwise indecipherable first line. I think you got it! Much obliged. Funny, because I spent much of yesterday reading J. Yelloly Watson’s book of family lore, and learning about his sale of the estate after the deaths of his parents. It just never clicked.

On the subject of the positioning of the note and the label, it is the small written note that sits above/ on top of the commercially printed label. (It was a trick of the light that it appeared as the reverse.) I didn’t want to upload too many pictures yesterday, but for the sake of completeness, I have added two more shots. As to removing it - not necessary I realize - my instinctive approach would be to strictly avoid freelancing any sort of alteration. “First do no harm,” as the saying goes.

Thanks again for your help, which was significant.

All best.

Osmund, you are right, of course, that we don't know whether the sitter is William Watson (1782–1864) (sorry for that misleading slip).

If LS Lawrence and Alison Elliott are able to collaborate here on the Watson family, we might be able to add to the excellent progress made already. The 'collected wisdom of the group' sums up Art Detective nicely!

I have included the group 'Dress and Textiles'.

Yes, I'd thought the light was coming from the top; but the shadow of the tiny white object (?a piece of grit) just above the word 'Northumberlan[d]' shows that it's coming from below. This in turn must mean the written label is on top of the trade label (as one would expect).

The good news for an art historian is that substantially more of the trade label may survive underneath the written one. If it can be uncovered relatively intact - and I'm veering now towards recommending you get it done professionally - you may be able to learn who painted your portrait.

Hah...no less than four different posts being written and posted at the same time, oblivious to what was being written in the others! Collected wisdom...or collective consciousness?

That was funny. And typical of so many of our communications these days.

On the clearly positive side, it shows interest by multiple people, on three continents, no less(!), in working together to solve a set of related problems. All with minimal introductions and no lead time. Pretty amazing, if you think about it.

Alison has since contacted me off the forum. So, I’ll collaborate with her on this, and post back if anything really interesting or useful for the others here comes up.

Before I go, I'd like to publicly thank her for actually completing the puzzle of the inscription, as well as offering the added info on the other portraits. The bit about the labels on the backs all being in the same hand is wonderful detail.

Take care everyone.

LSL, If you do ever remove the written label, and the trade label revealed below is fairly complete, I for one would love to see an image of it. I am very interested in minor/provincial artists, and always keen to expand our knowledge of them.

Allison, I'm sorry you're disappointed at our lack of response to your photo. Facial comparison in portraits is always a vexed issue, let alone where one is asked to try and compare a very unclear copy of a photograph of an old man with an oil portrait of a young one thought to be 50 or 60 years earlier...and there is nothing very distinctive about either face. People may have just felt there was not much they could say beyond “it’s not impossible”. For my part, since I'd already expressed the view that this portrait (like the others in the Cragside group) most likely dates from the 1770s/80s – and certainly that it’s well before the 1805 date suggested by Angela Lennox – it didn’t seem necessary to say that I don’t think it can be the same man as in the photograph (who was born in 1782).

I’m sorry, I promised you and everyone else a long time ago to write more here about research I’d done on this. But I decided to wait for the National Trust to answer our oft-asked question (since 2015!) about the source of the mysterious name ‘C E Adye’ that is in some way associated with another portrait in the group. Marion suggested nearly nine months ago that we might hear back before too long, so I thought it best to hang on in case the reply informed my/our opinions. Well, it didn’t happen (or hasn’t yet), and inevitably this thread moved further and further back in my mind. I’m sure you appreciate that with 200 discussions currently live on Art Detective, and a life to lead outside it (if I have one!), there are many other calls on everybody's time and energy.

Marion, is there any news on that front? If it’s not going to happen in the foreseeable, I’d better collate what I’ve got and post willy-nilly.

Osmund, I've asked again this morning for further information and an image of the label. In case there is no photograph on file, I have offered to follow this up by telephoning Cragside to try to obtain one.

The book of family lore referenced above is "The Tendring Hundred in the Olden Time" by J. Yelloly Watson (1877):

https://archive.org/details/cu31924028033078/page/n3

Thanks, Marion. Fingers crossed.

Are you sure that's the book, Kieran? There's not much there about the Watsons, really, and I can't see anything about J. Yelloly Watson’s sale of an estate after the deaths of his parents.

Osmund, that is indeed the book.

The material in it on the Watsons is pretty thin, I agree. The real value, for me, was in describing the history of the Howards, specifically Wm. Howard’s family, including his wife and his three daughters. (All of whom have now been identified.)

As to the sale of Elizabeth’s inherited property, I was referring to a site on the origins of Clacton-on-Sea, available here, https://www.clactonhistory.co.uk/clacton-history/

Alison, however, has since done some very nice work on the sale of the family possessions, in the late 19th c and early 20th c, but I don’t want to steal her thunder.

Oh, and before I forget, Alison also tracked down the name of the framer of the portrait of Elizabeth (Howard) Watson. The label was in the last image I posted. It was Samuel Bartington, his wife, Mahala, and their son, Benjamin. They were located in London and did business under several names in the mid-19th c. FWIW.

Ah, thanks for clarifying, LSL - and apologies, Kieran, for doubting your discovery. All interesting stuff, though sadly only tangential to our quest. I look forward to hearing more of Alison's research in due course - and apologies, too, to her for misspelling her name in a long post yesterday.

I have added my research in comments above but will attempt to clarify some points.
I have corresponded with Cragside and the National Trust in the past and queried the sitter C E Adye.
I was told that there is no identification on the painting and the attribution is unknown. The work had been titled “an unknown sitter, possibly C E Adye”. The word possibly has been lost in the last few years. Despite much research I have not been able to find a person named C E Adye.
The House Steward at Cragside in 2009 believed the portraits were Watsons. We could not name the brothers back then and the gentleman has since retired.
I obtained a copy of a handwritten Watson family tree from Lord Armstrongs papers at Tyne and Wear Archives. The tree is over three pages and has many omissions and some errors. It was written after 1860 because married names are included of some great granddaughters.
The Watson-Armstrong family is detailed on one page.
The Watson family on another page and this page expands on the family of Uncle and Aunt Wm and Dorothy Yelloly Watson (her name was not Margaret as stated in the tree) The four adult sons of this couple are named with mention that John was in the Army (he was a Lieutenant, I have not been able to find his regiment and do not know if he was in the British Army or East India Company) and Adam died in India 1817. Adams name was actually Jos Yelloly Watson and he enlisted as a Cadet in the EIC in 1812.
The third page details some of the family of Aunt Dorothy Yelloly Watson, naming her father Clement and her only brother Adam Yelloly 1741-1810
Why is there reference to Adam Yelloly in Armstrongs papers? He was not connected to the Armstrongs. I think Adam Yelloly is the sitter of the portrait now named as C E Adye.
I have attached the one page I had scanned of this tree. I obtained the document 10 years ago and did not bother scanning the other pages as the Yelloly page was minimal on information and the Watson-Armstrongs were already well documented. I do have the paper copy somewhere…
Am I correct in thinking a portrait might be painted on an occasion such as coming of age? If that is so and the four remaining portraits were the four Watson brothers they would have been painted between 1803 and 1814.
I have taken on board the hairstyles of the sitters and the timing of the use of the style. I wonder if there may have been a family preference to have the sitters painted with those hairstyles. If the older man is Adam Yelloly and as the paintings have been placed in similar frames could it be that the brothers mother wanted the portraits in the same/similar style as that of her brother? The Watsons would certainly have had no issue with paying a tax on powder. To me it looks like some of the styles are of natural hair and not wigs.
Perhaps we could consider who some of the family’s relatives and connections were and although of earlier generations the images available of these people could have have some bearing on the style of the paintings.
Cousins were Admiral Charles Watson, Lord Eldon and Baron Stowell, Wilmont Vaughan 1st Earl Lisbourne and the heirs of Baron John Rutherford to mention a few.
The father of Capt John and the Uncle Wm was Wm Watson 1723-1808. He married as his second wife Lillias Waldie 1731-1814. Lillias was a friend of Ann Drelincourt Lady Primrose who gave sanctuary and financial support to Flora MacDonald in London in the 1740s, and it is said she entertained Charles Edward Stuart at her London home in 1750. Lillias was an Executrix of Lady Primroses Will in 1775.
Clement Yelloly is also said to have assisted the Prince as detailed in the book A Tendering Hundred.
Watson ancestors are noted in an obituary of Lord Armstrongs wife in 1934. The reference is attached. They were Members of Parliament and 27 times Mayor of Berwick Upon Tweed.
Moving forward we know the portraits of Uncle and Aunt Wm and Dorothy are at Cragside. At some time they were passed from their descendants to the Watson-Armstrongs. The ‘family pictures’ are bequeathed to another Jos Yelloly Watson 1851-1918 by his father in 1888. We also know there is a photograph of this gentlemans daughter at Cragside, she was born in 1882.
This Jos Yelloly Watson was a stockbroker in London and became bankrupt in 1903 which was about the same time Lord Armstrong, Watson-Armstrong had financial difficulties due to ‘bad advice’. Could there be a connection?
The sale of Armstrongs artworks c1909 would provide an excellent excuse for obtaining the larger paintings to fill the spaces and it is likely the bankrupt JY did not have means at this time to display them.
The two Watson families had a close relationship spanning over 100 years. They attended weddings and were even witnesses on the other family’s marriage documents. I have a family photograph of William Henry Watson who had married Anne Armstrong.
I have recently found a tentative connection with the Adyes. Elizabeth Howard of the recently identified portrait had a sister Mary 1775-1826 who married Smith Bawtree 1766-1830. Smith Bawtree’s sister Elizabeth 1783-1856 was married to Ralph Willett Adye 1764-1804.

This is an older discussion but I wanted to draw your attention to two paintings by George Romney (1734–1802): ‘Young Man with a Flute’ and ‘William Watson’ that are similar to two of the works being discussed.

1. In searching for images similar to the portrait ‘C.E. Adye’ (https://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/1230235), I came across a painting at the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) called 'Young Man with a Flute’ that dates from the late 1760s. https://collections.dma.org/artwork/4152678.

The painting was purchased from a gallery in New York in 1961 and donated to the DMA in 1987 by Mrs. Sheridan Thompson. Reportedly, nearly twenty-five years later, it was attributed to George Romney with the assistance of Philip Mould. https://dma.org/press-release/dallas-museum-art-discovers-george-romney-painting-collections.

The strong resemblance between the sitter in ‘C.E. Adye’ and the sitter in ‘Young Man with a Flute’, as well as the near-identical clothing and the books (large for the man, small for the boy), lead me to believe the sitters are father and son (or brothers) and that 'C.E. Adye' is also by Romney. I have attached a composite.

2. At the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, there is a painting by George Romney with the title “William Watson”. https://tinyurl.com/4c28ay7w.

The painting is dated “1750-th”. The sitter strongly resembles the sitter in 'Portrait of an Unknown Man Holding a Pamphlet' by an unknown artist. I have attached a composite.

Could I please make yet another plea to the Collection for an explanation of where the name 'C. E. Adye' - apparently associated with another portrait in the Cragside group - comes from, and for an image of it wherever it is written? It must be somewhere - either on the painting/frame itself, or in a note on the accession record: why else would it have become attached to the work? See https://bit.ly/2yA4a9S & https://bit.ly/3vp3p1C.

It's always sad when collections don't respond to requests for more information from their records, especially repeated ones: it leads to a suspicion that they find us a bit of a nuisance, and would rather we didn't waste their time asking for help with research into artworks nominally in their care. While I fully understand that lack of staff, lockdown issues and the rest can make doing so a challenge, we have in this case been asking this same question for nearly *seven years* - since May 2015 on the previous thread, and Nov 2018 on this one. It's possible that neither Edward Stone nor Audrey King ever passed the request on in 2015; but Marion certainly did in 2018 - see her posts of 06/11/2018 17:36 & 26/11/2018 21:17.& 19/08/2019 10:36. And Allison seems previously to have had little luck with the Collection either.

I would also like to know from them the reason for / author of the possible attribution to J. S. C. Schaak. He's an obscure artist of generally modest talents, and little is known about him - it would be surprising if someone just plucked his name out of the air. If there is some good reason for it, that would be significant for our research, as *all* his exhibiting, known works and recorded residence in London date from a short period between 1761 and 1770.

Incidentally, Schaak was actually born in 1732, not 1728 - see attached. And where did Art UK get his 1809 death date from? I've researched him in some detail in recent years, and failed to find any trace of it myself.

I agree with Osmund's assesment that the portrait is early in date: circa 1770 has been mentioned (post, 22/10/2018).

On that basis, we have answered the discussion question, "Is the sitter in this portrait the lawyer William Watson (1782–1864)?". As such, despite the NT being slow to respond, the current designation of the portrait as an unknown man is correct, if rather unhelpful.

Do we think that this discussion is going to produce answers to questions about the sitter and the artist after all these years?

Thank you for the latest comments on this long-running discussion. I do think there may be more answers to come.

Osmund is right about my own previous attempts to find out more. Another email, February 2020, was unfortunately sent at a time when events overtook us all. I've renewed that request today. It seems worth waiting for a response about the name Adye.

Osmund, I've updated Art UK's dates for J. S. C. Schaak, based on the NPG's 'baptised 1732–active 1770'. According to a note in our database, the previous dates were used by both the National Trust and Artprice.

Please find attached images of the backs of two Cragside portraits being discussed here.

The first is https://bit.ly/3rVPCgr (NT1230235). It shows the inscription on the back of the painting that gave rise to the title 'C. E. Adye'. However, it looks more like 'G E Adye'. What do others think?

The other two images show the back of this discussion's 'Portrait of an Unknown Man Holding a Pamphlet' (NT1230237).

The Collections Assistant at Cragside has commented:

'I am afraid I have found more questions than answers! The information in the catalogue card of NT1230235 is the same as the information available on CMS. The painting is also not signed on the front, but it does have a label on the back (see image attached). This label would then have been the reason why the sitter was named C.E. Adye. Like you said, it would make sense for us to have a painting of a gentleman called Adye if he was related to General Sir John Adye (1819-1900). However, I have been looking into the older generations of the Adye family and I haven’t found anyone with the initials C.E..

I was also able to take down NT1230237 ['Portrait of an Unknown Man Holding a Pamphlet']. This painting was also not signed and it does have a couple of marks on the back (see images attached), however they don’t seem to mean much.

Now, to make things more confusing, when I was looking into the Adye family on Ancestry, I found that a couple of people had linked NT1230237 to a gentlemen called Major Stephen Payne Adye (1743-1794). They don’t give a reason for assuming Stephen Payne is the man in the painting, but this could mean that the five 18th century portraits that we have are actually of members of the Adye family rather than the Watson family like Alison Elliot suggested.

I would take the other portraits down to see if they have any more clues, but unfortunately they are hung on the stairs and so they are quite hard to get to.'

Many thanks to Helena Oliveira at Cragside House for her sketch of the Adye family tree, showing this discussion's portrait within it.

Could the text read "O.E. Adye"? Perhaps the paintings were originally part of the collection at Merley House. This link shows three Romney paintings there. https://tinyurl.com/yc7rnk67

According to the Ward family tree on Ancestry, Willett Lawrence Adye (1818–1878), lived at Merley House 1859–1869. Trustees sold the house in 1875 and Adye was declared bankrupt in 1877. He had a son named Octavius Ellerton Adye (1867–1917).

Marcie, though long and complicated, you should probably read the previous discussion about another portrait in the Cragside group of five: https://bit.ly/3KhjaM5. I first suggested that the inscription might read 'O.E. Adye' almost seven years ago (31/05/2015 05:52 on that thread), but we have been waiting those same seven years to get more information about the name that is associated with a different portrait in the group - https://bit.ly/3rVPCgr (NT1230235).

I'm grateful to the collections assistant at Cragside (Helena?) for the label image; on finally seeing it I am even more convinced it must read 'O.E.', not least because there seems to be no alternative in the family history with initials of 'C.E.' or 'G.E'. When I was actively working on this many years ago, I began preparing an extensive family tree based on published ones of the Adyes and of the Paynes (with many additions by me), and which when combined showed almost everyone of possible relevance on one wide sheet that you can scroll across. Unhappily the long and demotivating lack of response from the NT caused me to abandon that project unfinished, and also to put into abeyance all the research already done. This (inter alia) produced evidence that in my view gives us 95%+ certain identities for two of the other portraits - the pair in uniform. I now know the regiment and approx date of the army officer (https://bit.ly/3OAYPoa) , and it fits well with someone in the family.

Now that the NT are on side again I will attach the tree in its unfinished state; I can add to it later, but even as it stands it will help people understand some of the very complex relationships involved. The much simpler tree from Helena fits in with most of it, though I think a couple of things on hers are slightly wrong; but the probable descent of the portraits through the family is in any case far more complicated. As Marcie suggests, I think that the portraits once hung at Merl[e]y House, and were commissioned by Ralph Willett (1719-1795) who built and lived in it until his death. I believe they show various members of the Adye, Payne, Payne-Gallwey and possibly Stanley families (the last not yet added to the tree). The common thread is that they were likely all favoured cousins of the next generation, and most or all were to benefit significantly in his Will.

On the tree I have marked in green the descent of Merly House (A, B, C, etc for the owners), then marked in orange how ownership of the paintings might have descended after Merly was sold (a, b, c, etc). Octavius is 'd' in that sequence, though in view of his mental state ("feeble-minded since childhood") he would clearly have been owner only in name; and in fact it may well be that most or all of those who should logically have owned them before Winifred did not have houses large enough to hang such a large group, and that some or all of the portraits were in storage.

Unfortunately I am unable to do any more work on this until later in May - I'm very busy with personal matters, and there are several other AD discussions that need more urgent attention. I'll also be away for a week or so in the middle of the month.

Meanwhile, however, there is one question about the 'C/G/O. E. Adye' portrait that I asked in February that the Collection did not answer, perhaps because there's nothing in the file. I'll repeat it now, though, just in case: Do you have any information on the reason for (or author of) the possible attribution to J. S. C. Schaak? He's an obscure artist of fairly modest talents, and little is known about him - it would be surprising if someone just plucked his name out of the air. If there is some good reason for it, then that could be significant for our research, as *all* his exhibiting, known works and recorded residence in London date from a short period between 1761 and 1770.

I had not seen the earlier discussion, Osmund. Thank you for the excellent family tree.

I believe that the handwriting is that of Alice Margaret Harper (née Adye). Please see her handwriting on the 1911 Census. Her brother Octavius Ellerton Adye lived with her.

I will order the two wills, Osmund.

Ah, but *which* Wills, Marcie? Octavius did not make one - his entry in the probate register (attached) is just the power of administration granted to his sister Alice, who'd doubtless also had power of attorney while he was alive. There are any number of Wills, both before and after the sale of Merly, that might conceivably mention the portraits, though the chances are as ever very low - and the more so because of the number of family portraits that passed down was great, and several at least were of far greater importance and value...notably the magnificent group of Romneys of Ralph Willett and his family, which can be found today at, for example, the Louvre (https://bit.ly/3rZIHmt) and the Huntington (https://bit.ly/3MCUuix).

Very well done, though, for spotting that the handwriting on the label matches that of Octavius's sister and presumed guardian Alice in the 1911 Census, right down to the idiosyncratic 'O' (which now seems quiet certain). See attached composite.

The footnote on the portrait of Ralph Willett at the Louvre is certainly interesting (https://bit.ly/3rZIHmt). Here is the text, which indicates it was purchased at a Christie’s auction in 1897 and that it had earlier been incorrectly identified as John Stanley. Also, the text indicates that Willett sat for Romney in 1780, 1781, 1782 and 1783.

“Historique
Vente, Londres, Christie’s, 8 V 1897, n° 71 (portrait de Ralph Willett) ; Martin Colnaghi, marchand d’art, Londres ; acquis de ce dernier, 1897 (inscrit sur l’Inventaire R.F. comme Portrait de Sir John Willett).

Commentaire
Ralph Willett avait acheté le domaine de Merley House (Dorset) qu’il avait aménagé et agrandi pour abriter ses collections, lesquelles seront dispersées en 1813-1814 (Knox [2000],p. 38-45). Le portrait a pour cadre Merley House : on aperçoit par la fenêtre Wimborne Minster, avec ses tours caractéristiques, situé au nord de la demeure (cf. Thomas). À noter que le buste à gauche n’est pas identifié. Willett tient une lettre sur laquelle on lit : «To / John Stanley / in / St Christopher»; ce John Stanley était son cousin (cf. Thomas). C’est cette inscription qui est à l’origine de la mauvaise réidentification du modèle du R.F. 1095 lors de son entrée au Louvre.
À dater du début des années 1780 (séances de pose de Ralph Willett en 1780, 1781, 1782 et 1783.”

For the record, here are three articles that mention Merley House auctions in 1818, 1896 and 1905. Note the reference to the "Willett Adye section" in the 1905 Christie's auction.

On the whole I would discourage people from quoting, verbatim, long - in fact complete - sections of text from places to which links have already been provided: we can see it for ourselves, and repeating it all here merely fills the discussion with unnecessary extra verbiage. If there’s a specific part you want to draw attention to, then quote that; but less is definitely more.

I’m also not sure why you’re investigating the finer Willett/Adye portraits that were sold, since the portraits we’re interested in clearly weren’t. I only mentioned the Romneys (and there are at least three others) to show how our portraits would have been considered (and are) relatively minor works of far less interest and value, and are accordingly much less likely to appear as separate items in a Will. It’s just possible they were in one of the sales, but failed to sell – you would need to see a catalogue to check.

I have been having trouble ordering wills again. In the meantime, please find attached four wills/extracts from wills from the family of Abraham Charles Adye (1748–1815)(see Osmund Bullock's post of 25/10/2018 04:24). He is the most likely sitter to be portrayed holding a legal document related to Nevis.

In his 1815 will (PROB 11/1614/468), Abraham Charles Adye, of London but late of Grenada, bequeathed his estate to his wife Ann Adye. The 1818 will of Ann Adye (née Smith?)(d. 1818/1819)(PROB 11/1614/469), of Grenada, directed that her slaves be set free. She bequeathed her residual estate to her widowed sister Elizabeth Symonds. In her 1823 will, Elizabeth Symonds (d. abt. 1832)(née Smith?, m. Samuel Symonds?)(PROB 11/1806/47) bequeathed her estate to her niece Harriet Bayford and willed that Ann's slaves be set free. In her 1845 will (PROB 11/2030/243), Harriet Bayford (1782–1846) bequeathed the residue of her estate to her nephew James Heseltine Bayford (1804–1871).

I have posted these wills because they show that some members of the family were concerned about the freedom of slaves. And, while a few personal items were mentioned in two of the wills, no large family portraits were included in any of these four wills. The portraits were likely still at Merley House.

I think it's misleading to say that Ann Adye "directed that her slaves be set free": she directed that half a dozen named ones, three black and three mulatto (half-white), should be manumitted; and two of those, a mulatto brother and sister, she had "reason to believe" were already free by birth, but named them anyway in case this could not be proved. This probably means that she believed their father was someone in, or close to her family - very possibly her late husband. In any case manumission of a few named slaves, usually domestic, was commonplace in C18th Wills made by owners of slave estates in both the West Indies and North America; it does not, alas, mean that the testator was concerned about the freedom of slaves in general, and the status of their much larger numbers of "field" slaves usually continued unchanged, being seen as part of the value of the estate, like livestock.

I don't know if Abraham Adye himself was the owner of such an estate - I have seen no evidence of it, but it's possible Ann his wife may have inherited one from her family. I am very interested that you think her maiden name may have been Smith - when I saw her in Abraham's Will some years ago, I tried to find out more about her, but failed. Where did you find mention of it?

Incidentally, although I argued strongly for Abraham being our sitter in 2018, I now have other ideas; and one of the candidates, Ralph Willett's younger cousin and protégé John Stanley (1740-99) is I think the front-runner - he is the addressee of the letter held by Willett in the Louvre portrait. Equally likely from a professional angle, his connection to Nevis is stronger than Adye's. So, too, was his personal connection to Willett, who in his Will left him "... the land in Nevis heretofore the property of Michael Stanley his father, and which I have many years possessed by virtue of a mortgage", along with a substantial legacy.

Nevertheless Abraham Adye is still quite possible: although born and later based in adjacent St Kitts, he certainly practised law in Nevis itself as well in the early 1780s, arguing an important case on behalf of the young Horatio Nelson and the Admiralty. However a portrait thought to be Adye (but not with certainty) came on the art market a couple of years ago, and the sitter doesn't look much like ours....but it's not out of the question. Frustrating. What may possibly help is the apparent existence of a rare engraving of John Stanley as an older man, and that in 1914 or thereabouts was in the collection of Hastings Museum (he was MP there in 1792). It remains to be seen if they still have it...and as I've said, I really must stop working on this discussion until later in May!

Good points, Osmund. My guess about Ann’s surname is based on the marriage in Middlesex in 1786 of Samuel Symonds and Elizabeth Smith. I haven't been able to link the Bayford family to Ann Adye.

Here is a document that shows some of the early plantation owners in St. Kitts. https://tinyurl.com/4yfenhe3

I received the will of Alice Margaret Harper (née Adye)(1862– February 14, 1955) of “Ross Haven”, 25A Suffolk Road, Bournemouth, yesterday. She bequeathed her estate to the woman named on her public probate entry, the widow Margaret McNeill, who was also her executor. She called Mrs. McNeill “my dear friend (and nurse)”. No personal items were listed in the will.

Mrs. McNeill passed away on July 19, 1960, at “Ross Haven”. Her public probate entry mentions “Barbara Georgiana Blyth (wife of William Wilson Blyth) and Rhoda Fairhead Settle”. The 1939 England and Wales Register shows that Rhoda, a “state registered nurse”, lived with Barbara and William Blyth (an “aeroplane fitter”) in Southampton. They passed away in 1999, 1971 and 1965, respectively.

I thought that I might have researched an incorrect Alice Margaret Harper but her burial entry for February 18, 1955, confirms that she is the correct person. The burial entry for the Canford Magna Parish in Dorset states: “INTERRED IN “WILLETT” FAMILY VAULT IN old Churchyard”.

I suspect that, in 1955, the painting ‘C.E. Adye’ was not part of Alice’s estate and was already at Cragside.

Alastair Laing would like to suggest that we consider the name of Robert Edge Pine as a possible artist for this discussion’s portrait, and perhaps also for ‘C. E. Adye’ (NT1230235) and ‘Portrait of an Unknown Young Man Holding a Book’ (NT1230236). He suggests that the style of this portrait is compatible with Pine's work, and Pine was known for his democratic principles, which might have created sympathy between him and the sitter, who is is shown with a sloping back forehead, which Waterhouse notes as characteristic of the artist, in his 18th C Dictionary. The attribution is purely speculative.

Cragside does have a lot of "Unknown" artists and sitters C 1790 onwards. The faces do seem to have a possible Family resemblance.
Could I also add my guess as to the artist of this painting- namely
Thomas Lawrence 1769-1830. His Thomas Gataker has many similarities.Well-at least to me :-)
https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/thomas-gataker-17491844-102563/view_as/grid/search/makers:thomas-lawrence-17691830/sort_by/date_earliest/order/asc/page/1

Louis, Sir Thomas Lawrence is one of the most famous names in British portraiture. His relatively loose, bravura brushwork is very well-known and belongs to a quite different (and later) romantic portrait tradition to the plain and static work we see here. The Lawrence portrait you link to has nothing in common with our portrait bar a vague similarity in the wigs, I'm afraid, and the sitter's clothing is distinctively of the 1790s, decades later than ours. In fact Lawrence was born at about the time ours was painted - c.1770 (see, e.g., Jacob Simon, 28/02/2022 09:16), possibly a bit earlier and certainly no later than 1780.

Good to hear T Lawrence is so well thought of. He could paint in several styles. Here is a conventional portrait.
https://www.thomas-lawrence.org/Portrait-Of-Gerald-Wellesley-1790-1833.html
And as to date by clothing -always dodgy-here is 1790 Lawrence -impressionistic style of a man in a very similar green coat and wig.
https://www.thomas-lawrence.org/Portrait-Of-William-Lock-1790.html
Though I see above a suggestion of early 19th century by coat style- which would of course eliminate Robert Edge Pine- as he left England in about 1784.
Yes it is difficult to identify an artists work- one really needs an expert in that artist to actually inspect the physical work close to.But without that- one has to have a sort of TEAM discussion :-).

Louis, Lock is *not* wearing "a very similar green coat...". Can you not see that that it's a more structured garment, with the collar standing dramatically high at the back, unlike the limp one lying flat that our sitter sports? - a sure pointer to it (Lock's) dating from the last decade or so of the century. It is also single-breasted, while ours is double with a very wide overlap. These details matter. Wigs and natural hair dressed like a wig are a less exact science, and those of the 1760s/70s can sometimes be as wide and wild as those of the 1790s; but when they are (like ours) neat with little bulk up top and tight side-curls, they tend to be earlier, at least when worn by young men. For images of two coats that *are* similar to our sitter's, see these two firmly dated to 1764 & 1769: https://bit.ly/3PJV7cq & https://bit.ly/3M2Y1WP. However, the hairstyles could easily date from a couple of decades later or more.

As I explained at 22/10/2018 08:04, I do not agree with the date suggested by another contributor for the portrait of c.1805, believing it to be more like 1760s-70s, give or take, and certainly no later than c.1780. Nor, it would seem, does Jacob Simon, whose length and breadth of experience in C18th portraiture is second to none on this forum. You can doubt my expertise on this, but I think you might be unwise to doubt his.

As to Lawrence, whatever the date I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone with even the most basic knowledge of British C18th art who thinks our portrait could be by him - but hey, what do I know?

Having gotten a hold of the standard catalogue raisonné for Sir Thomas Lawrence (Garlick, 1989) for other purposes (namely, disassociating him from some half dozen portraits he did not paint listed under his name on Art UK), I can assure Louis this is not by Lawrence--who, as Osmund noted, did not paint like this.

Here, for the record, is an extract from an article in 'The Connoisseur' that reported on the Adye sale of paintings at the Christie's auction of December 9, 1905 (https://tinyurl.com/yckxped6). I have also attached the lists of works by Romney and by unknown artists that were in the sale (https://tinyurl.com/bdf2ryf9). The final attachment mentions the Adye family pictures in an article in 'The Athenaeum' (https://tinyurl.com/5bdnthad). It is always possible that Winifreda Armstrong (née Adye) purchased some of the Cragside paintings at that auction.

Earlier today I received the will of Elizabeth Adye (née Ross)(1822–1905), who was the wife of Willett Lawrence Adye (1818–1878). Octavious Ellerton Adye (1866–1917) and Alice Harper (née Adye)(1862–1955) were two of their children. I had hoped that the will would show that Elizabeth had bequeathed some of her paintings to Octavious Ellerton Adye but she left him only "his father's gold watch with coat of arms engraved on". She left furs and specific pieces of jewelry to nine other people. The residue of her estate ("plate jewellery furniture (including grand piano) pictures linen books china and ornaments") was left to her daughter Alice Harper.

Earlier today, I also received the will of John Miller Adye (1819–1900), who was the husband of Mary Cordelia Adye (née Stopford)(1841–1912). Winifreda Armstrong (née Adye) was one of their children. He bequeathed his sword, medals and decorations to his eldest son, his gold watch to his youngest son, and the residue of his estate to his wife.