File:Historical portraits; some notes on the painted portraits of celebrated characters of England, Scotland and Ireland (1897) (14577650899).jpg

Identifier: historicalportra00whea (find matches)
Title: Historical portraits; some notes on the painted portraits of celebrated characters of England, Scotland and Ireland
Year: 1897 (1890s)
Authors: Wheatley, Henry B. (Henry Benjamin), 1838-1917
Subjects: Portrait painters
Publisher: London, G. Bell
Contributing Library: Getty Research Institute
Digitizing Sponsor: Getty Research Institute

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mostfashionable company. Handel and Pepusch per-formed at these concerts, as did all the amateursof the day. J. Woolaston, who painted the portraitin the National Portrait Gallery, which is herereproduced, was one of the company that frequentedBrittons house. Besides being a musician Brittonwas also a book collector, and is said to havegathered the valuable collection of pamphletswhich he sold to Lord Somers for over ^500, andwhich is known to us as the Somers Tracts. TheEarl of Oxford, the Duke of Devonshire, and theEarls of Pembroke, Winchelsea, and Sunderland,and other book collectors, were in the habit ofspending Thursdays in book-hunting in the city,and of meeting afterwards at a tavern in Pater-noster Row. Britton frequently met them, and heentered their company with his coalsack under hisarm. Mention has already been made of Lawrencesfine portrait of Angerstein, and next to the latter,as a great picture collector, notice must be takenof Sir George Beaumont, the elegant amateur
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THOMAS BRITTON, BY J. WOLLASTON. MERCHANTS AND THE PEOPLE 257 (who had taken lessons of Richard Wilson), andthe most kind-hearted patron of painters, who maybe considered as a joint founder of the NationalGallery. When the question of buying theAngerstein Gallery was before the prime minister,Lord Liverpool, Sir George Beaumont went tohim and said: Buy them and I will add mine.The result was that he presented sixteen finepictures to the nation. His portrait by Reynoldswas shown at the South Kensington Exhibitionof 1867. The portrait of another munificent benefactor—the Rev. William Holwell Carr—by John Jackson,R.A., is hung in the National Gallery, to whichhe bequeathed a large number of fine pictures. Robert Vernon, a horse-dealer, made a fortuneby supplying the army with horses during the greatwar. He spent over ,£150,000 on the works ofcontemporary artists, and presented to the nationin 1847 his collection of 157 pictures. Amongstthe pictures presented to the South KensingtonE

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