Completed Maritime Subjects, Portraits: British 19th C 24 Is this portrait of Admiral Otway by John James Masquerier (1778–1855)?

Admiral Sir Robert Waller Otway (1770–1846)
Topic: Artist

See Tim William's comment as part of this completed discussion:
http://www.artuk.org/artdetective/discussions/discussions/further-information-is-sought-on-portrait-of-a-lord-in-ermine-robes

'There must be quite a few other Masquerier's on YourPaintings (Editor's note: now Art UK) masked by anonymous or incorrect attributions. Five, (now six) works for an incredibly prolific portrait painter cannot be accurate. This might be Masquerier's portrait of Admiral Otway exhibited at the RA in 1831'

Jade Audrey King, Entry reviewed by Art UK

Completed, Outcome

Edward Stone,

This painting is now listed as attributed to John Lucas (1807–1874).

This amendment will appear on Art UK in due course.

Thank you to all for participating in this discussion. To those viewing this discussion for the first time, please see below for all comments that led to this conclusion.

If you have anything more to add about this painting, please do propose another discussion via Art UK: http://bit.ly/2vvuGNt

23 comments

Oliver Perry,

Sorry, that should read "or by someone else".

I'm not sure what happened here: I raised a query about the artist of the painting as 'from collection' yesterday and its totally disappeared.

This portrait is not from 1831: it shows Otway in the 1843-47 admiral's uniform and he got the GCB, which he is wearing, in 1845 so it was probably painted -or at least adjusted then (from KCB).
It was presented to the Naval Gallery at Greenwich Hospital in 1891 by his son, but without an artist name being supplied, and passed with the rest of the collection from the Naval Gallery to the care of the NMM in 1936 (though stil property of Greenwich Hospital, i.e. the royal charity organization). No one has yet suggested an artist.

Sophie Grillet,

Could it be by one of the prolific american family of artists, Rembrandt Peale, Sarah Miriam Peale and others? They were working in Philadelphia around the early 19th C.
http://alchetron.com/Rembrandt-Peale-1108876-W
This portrait of a military man has a very similar sky backdrop.

I've not checked, but rather doubt Otway had any reason to be in Philadelphia in the last few years of his life: if I was cataloguing this for sale I'd be inclined to say 'circle of Henry William Pickersgill' but I'm no more convinced it might be by him than Peale.

Martin Hopkinson,

Is there any chance that the portrait dates from as late as 1848? For, if so one should consider the possibility that the portrait is by one of the French artists who fled across the English Channel on the fall of Louis Philippe. Some of these certainly painted portraits.

I can't see why it should be posthumous (as that would make it), whoever the painter was, and comparison of feature detail with the Gauci print after the Masquerier (exh.1831) does not suggest this was copied from it. Whether the family had the 1831 canvas or not - since the most likely to have commissioned it - the obvious point at which this late-life one would have been done is when Otway got the GCB in 1845, as shown in it, the year before his death.

Osmund Bullock,

As you say, Pieter, most likely to have been painted ad vivum in celebration of his 1845 GCB, the insignia of which he received from Queen Victoria in an investiture on 30th June, ten months and more before his unexpected death. The riband and badge of his GCB were returned by his son the 2nd Baronet during an audience with the monarch in Feb 1847 – this seems to have been quite common, I was surprised to find.

As one would expect for a private commission, I can’t find any newspaper mention of such a later portrait, nor does one seem to have been exhibited by any artist at the RA or the BI – and certainly not by Masquerier, who all but ceased professional work in 1823, painting little but what he wanted in his retirement. His 1831 portrait of Otway was one of the last two portraits he showed, and he exhibited nothing at all after 1844. An Irish artist is a possibility, granted Sir Robert’s Irish origins, and there is a book of RHA exhibitors and their works; but like the one for the SBA it is quite recent, which means it hasn’t been scanned, and an OCR search by title is impossible. However, the National Art Library has a partial run of RHA exhibition catalogues, including 1846 & 1848 (but not ’45 or ’47), together with those of the SBA 1845-48 and beyond. They also have a manuscript (by Graves) 'Index to portraits exhibited at the Royal Academy and elsewhere from 1760 to [ca. 1920]', which should include the SBA. I will try and look at those next week.

I will also be going next week to the Heinz Archive, and will check the sitters’ boxes and card index for Otway (and also for Loder while I’m at it). Other than that I have nothing else to suggest. In answer to the original question, I think it is most unlikely that this portrait is by Masquerier, and it is certainly not in any way related to the one he exhibited in 1831.

Thanks Osmund: if anything appears it will be useful, though this is far from a critical matter. The significance of the item is as an 'archive' image and its hard to envisage a situation in which it would be hung as part of a story of contemporary public interest -though as a bit player he was involved in some notable events: but 'whodunnit' would still be good to know.

Osmund Bullock,

Well, the Heinz Archive didn't help with an artist's name, though it did turn up a couple of other versions of the portrait.

One is this poor copy sold at Christies in 2001, and formerly owned by the Royal Navy Trophy Centre: http://bit.ly/1U5FM6P . The other is more interesting - a close version still apparently held by the family. In 1980 it was said to be in the 'Stanford Park' collection - this seems to be an error for Stanford Hall, near Lutterworth, Leics, the ancestral home of the Caves. Admiral Sir Robert Otway's brother Henry married Sarah Cave, the heiress of the that family (and later suo jure Baroness Braye), and the house is still owned by their descendants.

I'm attaching a very poor photocopied and scanned image from the NPG file - it looks like the Courtauld (Witt) will have a better photo, but even on this you can see that it's very close to the NMM version, with just a few small differences visible, suggesting it may be a duplicate by the same artist rather than a copy. I suppose the family might have information on the artist...or perhaps not if they didn't give it to the NPG.

Martin Hopkinson,

The possibility that the portrait is Irish needs further investigation. Castle Otway near Tipperary was a large house which was burnt down in 1922. Inventories of its contents may exist in Eire.

Picking up on Martin's Irish comment, if anyone has ready access to Ann M. Stewart's 'Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts: Index of Exhibitors and Their Works, 1826-1979' it would be a kindness just to check Otway doesn't figure there c.1845....

Osmund Bullock,

Pieter, I glanced at Stewart's RHA book when I was at the Heinz last weeks. It has 7,000 artists listed alphabetically over three volumes and nearly 1,000 pages, and unfortunately there is no short way of looking either for Otway as a sitter, or for specific exhibition years. Being published in 1985-7, I imagine it will be a long time before it is scanned and searchable by OCR.

The only possible ways forward with the RHA would be either (a) to access the original catalogues for the relevant years (1845-48, say) - the National Library of Ireland has *all* of those, the NAL has only 1846 & 1848, the BL none at all; or (b) to contact the compiler, Ann M Stewart, whose working papers may have listed the works by year. But even if she (?born 1944) is still active, and we can find her, that would be a big ask for (as you say) a non-critical matter. However, I will happily check the two at the NAL, along with Graves's manuscript sitters' index which includes the SBA.

Thanks, but don't make a special journey! I'm not optimistic from what you say. Otway got his GCB early in May 1845 (announced in Freeman's Jnl, pub in Dublin, on 7th) and he died in third week of May 1846, but that's at least a narrow window for painting from life.

Thank you Andrea: an interesting idea. Looking at the general quality of his work as represented on Art UK the good stuff seems rather more colourful, but often its a matter of condition. Its certainly closer than Masquerier and worth pinning on the board to see if it stands up to further consideration.

Bendor Grosvenor,

An excellent discussion here, everyone - well done. I think certainly, with what we can see of the technique and the differences in the engraving, that we can rule out Masquerier here. Thanks Osmund for going to the Heinz for this one. Fascinating to see the other versions. I must say (though I don't know his work at all) I find Andrea's suggestion of Lucas very compelling indeed. Could be an inspired choice - what do others think?

Osmund Bullock,

I like the idea of John Lucas, too. My only qualification is that his backgrounds, especially exterior ones, tend to be much busier - a ship, a mountain, a bridge, a train, a building, etc - while this is uncharacteristically blank. But he certainly seems to have been favoured by naval men - as well as the Admirals Cockburn (exhib RA 1845) & Owen Pell (RA 1850), he exhibited a portrait of Admiral Geo Seymour at the RA in 1860 (see http://bit.ly/2b9YPLY ). Our portrait was not exhibited by Lucas at the SBA (I have the paper book); nor by him or anyone else at the RA, BI or indeed RSA (I have searchable downloaded copies of the last three). However, there is a 1910 biography of Lucas by his son Arthur ("mainly deduced from the correspondence of his sitters") that apparently contains a sitters' list. It's not been uploaded anywhere, but there are copies in various libraries including the National Art Library. The NAL also has those 1846 & 1848 RHA catalogues, and Graves's manuscript index of sitters that I mentioned above...I think a visit to the V&A is now unavoidable.

EDIT: There is tenuous circumstantial support for a Lucas portrait. According to Stewart & Cutten's 'Portrait Painters in Britain', Lucas was a friend (or at least acquaintance) of Richard Buckner - and Buckner exhibited a watercolour portrait of Otway's widow at the SBA in 1853. Moreover both Lady O. and Buckner were drawn by (P.A.) Théodore Senties, a little known (but rather good) visiting French artist who exhibited in London during the 1850s.

While this is in the 'Maritime Subjects' group, it's perhaps one on which a 19th-c Portraits call should be made on whether its time to call a halt for the time being (which has been suggested from PCF). The original issue was whether the artist might be John James Masquerier to which there is general agreement the answer is 'no', though he did exhibit an earlier (1831) portrait of this sitter. What we know is that this one shows Otway in 1843-47 admiral's unform and wearing the GCB to which his KCB was upped in April/May 1845, a year before his death in May 1846. There is record of two apparent versions and one copy: the present version was given by the sitter's son to the Naval Gallery in the Painted Hall at Greenwich in 1891, and was transferred with that holding (now called the Greenwich Hospital Collection) to the care of the NMM in 1936; the Witt Library recorded another in 1980 as still with collateral family at Stanford Hall, Leics, and an apparently inferior copy was sold at Sotheby's in 2001 from the RN Trophy Centre, Portsmouth. Even if the GCB decoration was only adjusted in 1845 -rather than the portrait painted to mark the award- the date bracket for a prime version is therefore 1843-46 -though which version (assuming there were only two) is prime remains TBC. So does the identity of the artist but mainly circumstantial evidence suggests a provisional attribution to John Lucas is a better point to start from than 'British school': would that be an agreeable pro. tem. conclusion?

Barbara Bryant,

There's been a good discussion here and I agree to the general conclusion that "attributed to John Lucas" is better than an attribution to Masquerier. The style of the work does however seem to be too stiff to be by Lucas. But let's go with that, barring any further information about the version at Stanford Hall (which might be the prime version, making the NMM one a copy). I'll leave it to Pieter to make the recommendation, as he has led on this one.

I have changed the NMM/RMG database artist attribution for this from 'British school to 'attributed to John Lucas' with a note added at the bottom of the otherwise largely biographical entry there as follows:

'The portrait has usually been called 'British school' but a public discussion on the Art UK website (2016-17) has identified another version either still or formerly at Stanford Park, Leics., and suggested a provisional attribution to John Lucas, though this remains for further debate.'