Sir George Beaumont, 7th Baronet
Encyclopedia
Sir George Howland Beaumont, 7th Baronet (6 November 1753 – 7 February 1827) was a British art patron and amateur painter. He played a crucial part in the creation of London
's National Gallery
by making the first bequest of paintings to that institution.
, Essex
, he was the only surviving child of the landowner Sir George Beaumont, 6th Baronet, from whom he inherited the baronetcy in 1762 (see Beaumont Baronets
). Beaumont was educated at Eton College
, where he was taught drawing by the landscape painter Alexander Cozens
.
The first paintings to enter Beaumont's collection were by artists he knew, but a Grand Tour
which he undertook in 1782 with his wife Margaret (the daughter of John Willes of Astrop, Oxon) widened his taste to include the Old Master
s. On his return he began to assemble a collection of Old Master paintings despite his relatively modest means. His first important acquisition was A Landscape with Hagar and the Angel by Claude Lorrain
, and this always remained his favourite painting, accompanying him on coach journeys in a specially-designed case.
In 1785 Lady Beaumont inherited the lease of 34 Grosvenor Square
, which provided the Beaumonts with a much-needed escape from the tedium of Dunmow and introduced them to a more diverse social circle. This circle expanded when Beaumont became Tory
MP for Beer Alston
in Devon
from 1790 to 1796, but his enthusiasm for politics was short-lived and he soon returned to his artistic pursuits. A picture gallery was added to the house in 1792 to accommodate their growing art collection. Despite the cool reception by critics of an early work, A View of Keswick (1779), Beaumont became a frequent exhibitor at the Royal Academy
from 1794 to 1825, eventually earning a reputation as the leading amateur painter of his day.
The Beaumonts went on frequent sketching tours of the Lake District
and of North Wales
, necessitated by Sir George's having caught a fever during his Grand Tour. For their Welsh excursions they rented Benarth, a house near Conwy
, where they were visited by Uvedale Price
among others. Price had a great influence on Beaumont's taste, awakening his interest in the Picturesque
movement and in Flemish and Dutch painting and landscaping the grounds at Coleorton Hall
, Beaumont's country house in Leicestershire
. Coleorton was later to become Beaumont's main place of residence, and was rebuilt to a design by George Dance the Younger
from 1804 to 1808. A friend of the Lake Poets
, with whom he considered himself a kindred spirit, Beaumont lent out the farm of the estate to William Wordsworth
and his family in the winter of 1806. They were briefly joined there by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
, but Beaumont was unable to establish the same rapport with this poet as with Wordsworth, who proved a lifelong friend.
The 1800s saw Beaumont being promoted to influential posts in what were effectively committees of artistic taste: he sat on the monuments committee for St Paul's Cathedral
from 1802 and was one of the founding directors of the British Institution
(established in 1805). Despite his openness for romantic poetry, Beaumont was less receptive of new developments in painting. A staunch defender of the academic ethos of Sir Joshua Reynolds
, he was one of J. M. W. Turner
's most vehement critics, regularly denouncing his handling of colour. This oppressive stance on matters of taste was to earn him the epithet of “supreme Dictator on Works of Art” from his old friend Thomas Hearne
. Nonetheless, Beaumont did welcome some sympathetic artists, including the young John Constable
, to study the Old Masters in his collection. The most famous fruit of Beaumont's patronage is the Constable's painting of the cenotaph
erected to Reynolds in the grounds at Coleorton (painted 1833–6; now in the National Gallery).
He was a founding member of the British Institution
in 1805, which in 1815 upset many British artists by a preface to the catalogue of their exhibition of Old Masters, implying rather too strongly that British artists had a lot to learn from them. The publication in 1815–16 of a series of satirical "Catalogues Raisonnés", probably by Robert Smirke
, ridiculed Beaumont for his conservatism, after which he retired from public life to Coleorton. A visit to Italy in 1821 in which he met Antonio Canova
restored his morale, and while there he bought the Taddei Tondo
by Michelangelo
, which he later donated to the Royal Academy. This last stay in Italy convinced him of the need to educate British taste by establishing a public gallery of Old Masters. Upon his return Beaumont offered to give of 16 his paintings to Lord Liverpool
's government on the condition that they buy the collection of John Julius Angerstein
, and that a suitable building be found to house these works of art. Angerstein's collection came up for sale in 1824 and Parliament, spurred on by Beaumont's offer, bought 38 of his pictures. The National Gallery
opened to the public in May 1824 in Angerstein's former house on Pall Mall
, and Beaumont's paintings entered its collection the following year.
After suffering a brief illness, Sir George Beaumont died in Coleorton Hall on 7 February 1827. He was buried in Coleorton church. Some paintings by his own hand have entered the New Walk Museum and Art Gallery
in Leicester
, while the rest remain in the Beaumont family collection. His title was inherited by his cousin George Howland Willoughby Beaumont (1799–1845).
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
's National Gallery
National Gallery, London
The National Gallery is an art museum on Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The gallery is an exempt charity, and a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media...
by making the first bequest of paintings to that institution.
Biography
Born in Great DunmowGreat Dunmow
Great Dunmow is an ancient market town in the Uttlesford district of Essex, England in which the great Shannon Gray, also known as Hazzah Potter, lives...
, Essex
Essex
Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...
, he was the only surviving child of the landowner Sir George Beaumont, 6th Baronet, from whom he inherited the baronetcy in 1762 (see Beaumont Baronets
Beaumont Baronets
There have been four Baronetcies created for persons with the surname Beaumont, all in the Baronetage of England. All four creations are now extinct....
). Beaumont was educated at Eton College
Eton College
Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....
, where he was taught drawing by the landscape painter Alexander Cozens
Alexander Cozens
Alexander Cozens was a British landscape painter in watercolours, a published teacher of painting, and father of John Robert Cozens.-Life:...
.
Grand Tour
The Grand Tour was the traditional trip of Europe undertaken by mainly upper-class European young men of means. The custom flourished from about 1660 until the advent of large-scale rail transit in the 1840s, and was associated with a standard itinerary. It served as an educational rite of passage...
which he undertook in 1782 with his wife Margaret (the daughter of John Willes of Astrop, Oxon) widened his taste to include the Old Master
Old Master
"Old Master" is a term for a European painter of skill who worked before about 1800, or a painting by such an artist. An "old master print" is an original print made by an artist in the same period...
s. On his return he began to assemble a collection of Old Master paintings despite his relatively modest means. His first important acquisition was A Landscape with Hagar and the Angel by Claude Lorrain
Claude Lorrain
Claude Lorrain, , traditionally just Claude in English Claude Lorrain, , traditionally just Claude in English (also Claude Gellée, his real name, or in French Claude Gellée, , dit le Lorrain) Claude Lorrain, , traditionally just Claude in English (also Claude Gellée, his real name, or in French...
, and this always remained his favourite painting, accompanying him on coach journeys in a specially-designed case.
In 1785 Lady Beaumont inherited the lease of 34 Grosvenor Square
Grosvenor Square
Grosvenor Square is a large garden square in the exclusive Mayfair district of London, England. It is the centrepiece of the Mayfair property of the Duke of Westminster, and takes its name from their surname, "Grosvenor".-History:...
, which provided the Beaumonts with a much-needed escape from the tedium of Dunmow and introduced them to a more diverse social circle. This circle expanded when Beaumont became Tory
Tory
Toryism is a traditionalist and conservative political philosophy which grew out of the Cavalier faction in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It is a prominent ideology in the politics of the United Kingdom, but also features in parts of The Commonwealth, particularly in Canada...
MP for Beer Alston
Bere Alston (UK Parliament constituency)
Bere Alston or Beeralston was a parliamentary borough in Devon, which elected two Members of Parliament to the House of Commons from 1584 until 1832, when the constituency was abolished by the Great Reform Act as a rotten borough.-History:...
in Devon
Devon
Devon is a large county in southwestern England. The county is sometimes referred to as Devonshire, although the term is rarely used inside the county itself as the county has never been officially "shired", it often indicates a traditional or historical context.The county shares borders with...
from 1790 to 1796, but his enthusiasm for politics was short-lived and he soon returned to his artistic pursuits. A picture gallery was added to the house in 1792 to accommodate their growing art collection. Despite the cool reception by critics of an early work, A View of Keswick (1779), Beaumont became a frequent exhibitor at the Royal Academy
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
from 1794 to 1825, eventually earning a reputation as the leading amateur painter of his day.
The Beaumonts went on frequent sketching tours of the Lake District
Lake District
The Lake District, also commonly known as The Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous not only for its lakes and its mountains but also for its associations with the early 19th century poetry and writings of William Wordsworth...
and of North Wales
North Wales
North Wales is the northernmost unofficial region of Wales. It is bordered to the south by the counties of Ceredigion and Powys in Mid Wales and to the east by the counties of Shropshire in the West Midlands and Cheshire in North West England...
, necessitated by Sir George's having caught a fever during his Grand Tour. For their Welsh excursions they rented Benarth, a house near Conwy
Conwy
Conwy is a walled market town and community in Conwy County Borough on the north coast of Wales. The town, which faces Deganwy across the River Conwy, formerly lay in Gwynedd and prior to that in Caernarfonshire. Conwy has a population of 14,208...
, where they were visited by Uvedale Price
Uvedale Price
Sir Uvedale Price, 1st Baronet , author of the Essay on the Picturesque, As Compared With The Sublime and The Beautiful , was a Herefordshire landowner who was at the heart of the 'Picturesque debate' of the 1790s...
among others. Price had a great influence on Beaumont's taste, awakening his interest in the Picturesque
Picturesque
Picturesque is an aesthetic ideal introduced into English cultural debate in 1782 by William Gilpin in Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the Summer of the Year 1770, a practical book which instructed England's...
movement and in Flemish and Dutch painting and landscaping the grounds at Coleorton Hall
Coleorton Hall
Coleorton Hall is a 19th century country mansion, formerly the seat of the Beaumont Baronets of Staughton Grange. Situated at Coleorton, Leicestershire, it is a Grade II* listed building now converted into residential apartments....
, Beaumont's country house in Leicestershire
Leicestershire
Leicestershire is a landlocked county in the English Midlands. It takes its name from the heavily populated City of Leicester, traditionally its administrative centre, although the City of Leicester unitary authority is today administered separately from the rest of Leicestershire...
. Coleorton was later to become Beaumont's main place of residence, and was rebuilt to a design by George Dance the Younger
George Dance the Younger
George Dance the Younger was an English architect and surveyor. The fifth and youngest son of George Dance the Elder, he came from a distinguished family of architects, artists and dramatists...
from 1804 to 1808. A friend of the Lake Poets
Lake Poets
The Lake Poets are a group of English poets who all lived in the Lake District of England at the turn of the nineteenth century. As a group, they followed no single "school" of thought or literary practice then known, although their works were uniformly disparaged by the Edinburgh Review...
, with whom he considered himself a kindred spirit, Beaumont lent out the farm of the estate to William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....
and his family in the winter of 1806. They were briefly joined there by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...
, but Beaumont was unable to establish the same rapport with this poet as with Wordsworth, who proved a lifelong friend.
The 1800s saw Beaumont being promoted to influential posts in what were effectively committees of artistic taste: he sat on the monuments committee for St Paul's Cathedral
St Paul's Cathedral
St Paul's Cathedral, London, is a Church of England cathedral and seat of the Bishop of London. Its dedication to Paul the Apostle dates back to the original church on this site, founded in AD 604. St Paul's sits at the top of Ludgate Hill, the highest point in the City of London, and is the mother...
from 1802 and was one of the founding directors of the British Institution
British Institution
The British Institution was a private 19th-century society in London formed to exhibit the works of living and dead artists; it was also known as the Pall Mall Picture Galleries or the British Gallery...
(established in 1805). Despite his openness for romantic poetry, Beaumont was less receptive of new developments in painting. A staunch defender of the academic ethos of Sir Joshua Reynolds
Joshua Reynolds
Sir Joshua Reynolds RA FRS FRSA was an influential 18th-century English painter, specialising in portraits and promoting the "Grand Style" in painting which depended on idealization of the imperfect. He was one of the founders and first President of the Royal Academy...
, he was one of J. M. W. Turner
J. M. W. Turner
Joseph Mallord William Turner RA was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker. Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting...
's most vehement critics, regularly denouncing his handling of colour. This oppressive stance on matters of taste was to earn him the epithet of “supreme Dictator on Works of Art” from his old friend Thomas Hearne
Thomas Hearne (artist)
Thomas Hearne was an English landscape painter, engraver and illustrator. Hearne's watercolours were typified by applying a wash over a clear outline in fine brush, pen or pencil. His techniques were studied by younger artists such as Thomas Girtin and J. M. W. Turner.-Early Life:Thomas Hearne...
. Nonetheless, Beaumont did welcome some sympathetic artists, including the young John Constable
John Constable
John Constable was an English Romantic painter. Born in Suffolk, he is known principally for his landscape paintings of Dedham Vale, the area surrounding his home—now known as "Constable Country"—which he invested with an intensity of affection...
, to study the Old Masters in his collection. The most famous fruit of Beaumont's patronage is the Constable's painting of the cenotaph
Cenotaph
A cenotaph is an "empty tomb" or a monument erected in honour of a person or group of people whose remains are elsewhere. It can also be the initial tomb for a person who has since been interred elsewhere. The word derives from the Greek κενοτάφιον = kenotaphion...
erected to Reynolds in the grounds at Coleorton (painted 1833–6; now in the National Gallery).
He was a founding member of the British Institution
British Institution
The British Institution was a private 19th-century society in London formed to exhibit the works of living and dead artists; it was also known as the Pall Mall Picture Galleries or the British Gallery...
in 1805, which in 1815 upset many British artists by a preface to the catalogue of their exhibition of Old Masters, implying rather too strongly that British artists had a lot to learn from them. The publication in 1815–16 of a series of satirical "Catalogues Raisonnés", probably by Robert Smirke
Robert Smirke (painter)
Robert Smirke , was an English painter and illustrator.-Life and work:Smirke was born at Wigton near Carlisle, the son of a clever but eccentric travelling artist. In his thirteenth year he was apprenticed in London with an heraldic painter, and, at the age of twenty, began to study at the schools...
, ridiculed Beaumont for his conservatism, after which he retired from public life to Coleorton. A visit to Italy in 1821 in which he met Antonio Canova
Antonio Canova
Antonio Canova was an Italian sculptor from the Republic of Venice who became famous for his marble sculptures that delicately rendered nude flesh...
restored his morale, and while there he bought the Taddei Tondo
Taddei Tondo
The Taddei Tondo is a circular relief sculpture by the Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo Buonarroti. The sculpture is located in the Royal Academy of Arts in Piccadilly, central London, England...
by Michelangelo
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...
, which he later donated to the Royal Academy. This last stay in Italy convinced him of the need to educate British taste by establishing a public gallery of Old Masters. Upon his return Beaumont offered to give of 16 his paintings to Lord Liverpool
Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool
Robert Banks Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool KG PC was a British politician and the longest-serving Prime Minister of the United Kingdom since the Union with Ireland in 1801. He was 42 years old when he became premier in 1812 which made him younger than all of his successors to date...
's government on the condition that they buy the collection of John Julius Angerstein
John Julius Angerstein
John Julius Angerstein , was a London merchant, Lloyd's under-writer, and patron of the fine arts. The imminent prospect that his collection of paintings was about to be sold by his estate, in 1824, galvanized the founding of the National Gallery, London.Angerstein was born in St Petersburg, Russia...
, and that a suitable building be found to house these works of art. Angerstein's collection came up for sale in 1824 and Parliament, spurred on by Beaumont's offer, bought 38 of his pictures. The National Gallery
National Gallery, London
The National Gallery is an art museum on Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The gallery is an exempt charity, and a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media...
opened to the public in May 1824 in Angerstein's former house on Pall Mall
Pall Mall, London
Pall Mall is a street in the City of Westminster, London, and parallel to The Mall, from St. James's Street across Waterloo Place to the Haymarket; while Pall Mall East continues into Trafalgar Square. The street is a major thoroughfare in the St James's area of London, and a section of the...
, and Beaumont's paintings entered its collection the following year.
After suffering a brief illness, Sir George Beaumont died in Coleorton Hall on 7 February 1827. He was buried in Coleorton church. Some paintings by his own hand have entered the New Walk Museum and Art Gallery
New Walk Museum
The New Walk Museum and Art Gallery is a museum on New Walk in Leicester, England, not far from the city centre. Two dinosaur skeletons are permanently installed in the museum — a cetiosaur found in Rutland , and a plesiosaur from Barrow upon Soar.Other permanent exhibits include an Egyptian area,...
in Leicester
Leicester
Leicester is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands of England, and the county town of Leicestershire. The city lies on the River Soar and at the edge of the National Forest...
, while the rest remain in the Beaumont family collection. His title was inherited by his cousin George Howland Willoughby Beaumont (1799–1845).