Interview with the Warwick County Record Office

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xTf6HuzSsI My most rambling interview to date, explaining my love of the Warwick Castle Archive now held by the Warwickshire County Record Office.

The Candyman – A lost portrait revealed

Picture: Portrait of Cornelis Nuyts by Jurgen Ovens. LEFT – Formerly Warwick Castle. RIGHT – Doyle Auction House, New York. I recently decided to look into a lost portrait of an old man (above left). The picture in question used to hang at Warwick Castle and was attributed to Rembrandt in the past. Photographs show……

The Life of a Doorway from Rubens’s House

Important works of art have always been on the move. It is possible, or at least was in the past, to acquire paintings or even objects once owned by famous artists. These might have once been in their collection, or even painted for their own homes. To own a doorway once belonging to your favourite……

Romney Society Lecture

Image: Self portrait, Attributed to John Westbrooke Chandler. National Portrait Gallery, London. NPG 927. POSTPONED TILL ANOTHER DATE TBC. I’m honoured to announce that I’ll be giving a lecture for the Romney Society’s AGM on 3rd April 2020 in Cumbria. The subject that I’ve been asked to lecture on is John Westbrooke Chandler, and the……

From House to House: A portrait of Katherine Grey

Image: Katherine Grey and her son, English School c.1560, Syon House. It never ceases to amaze me how historic portraits were often passed between great houses in the many centuries after they were painted. This was often for dynastic as well as aesthetic reasons. Questions of the ‘appropriateness’ of certain pictures hanging in specific locations……

Canaletto’s Pen and Ink of Warwick Castle

Image: View of the South Front of Warwick Castle 1748, Giovanni Antonio Canaletto, brown ink on paper with wash, Christie’s New York. (Being sold as part of the collection of J F Safra). By a remarkable stroke of luck, Canaletto’s very fine drawing of the South Front of Warwick Castle is coming up for sale……

Canaletto’s view of Warwick Castle bequeathed to the MET

Image: Giovanni Antonio Canaletto, South Front of Warwick Castle, dated 1748. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, 2019. Some wonderful news has arrived that the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has been bequeathed Canaletto’s view of Warwick Castle from the South Front. Dated to 1748, and being the smallest canvas……

‘The Oak’ – An Earl of Warwick’s Poem on Trafalgar Day

In celebration of Trafalgar Day, held each year on the 21st October, here is a suitably apt poem from the 2nd Earl of Warwick’s poetry manuscript. Playing on the illusion of William Cowper’s famous lines on the Oak, memorialising Nelson’s death is clearly the subject of these lines. The Oak Near to this stone which……

Article: John Westbrooke Chandler (1763/4-1807)

Image: Self portrait, John Westbrooke Chandler, Christie’s, New York, 30 Oct 2018. I’m thrilled to have had an article published in the British Art Journal (XX, 1, pp.82-89) on the little known Georgian painter-poet John Westbrooke Chandler (1763/4-1807). After training in the Royal Academy Schools, Chandler received the patronage and support of his natural half-brother……

Warwick Words History Festival – A Georgian Earl of Warwick

Image: Portrait of George Greville, 2nd Earl of Warwick, painted by his tutor Dr William Patoun. Warwick Castle. I am very grateful to the kind people of the Warwick Words History Festival, who have invited me to give another lecture for this year’s programme. This year, I have opted to focus on the life and……