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[]London is the capital of England and the United Kingdom. It has been a major settlement for two millennia, and the history of London goes back to its founding by the Romans, when it was named Londinium. London's core, the ancient City of London, the 'square mile', retains its medieval boundaries...
's
National GalleryThe National Gallery in London, founded in 1824, houses a rich collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900 in its home on Trafalgar Square...
by making the first bequest of paintings to that institution.
Biography
Born in
DunmowDunmow may refer to:*Great Dunmow, a town in the Uttlesford district of Essex, England*Little Dunmow, a village located about 3 miles outside the town of Great Dunmow...
,
EssexEssex is a county in the East of England region of the United Kingdom. The county town of Essex is Chelmsford.-History:In pre-Roman Britain the territories of Suffolk and Essex were home to the Trinovantes tribe, which had grown wealthy through intensive trade with the Roman Empire, contemporary...
, he was the only surviving child of the landowner Sir George Beaumont, 6th Baronet, from whom he inherited the baronetcy in 1762 (see
Beaumont BaronetsThere have been four Baronetcies created for persons with the surname Beaumont, all in the Baronetage of England. One creation is extant as of 2008....
). Beaumont was educated at
Eton CollegeEton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent boarding school for boys aged approx. 13 to 19. 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 CozensAlexander Cozens , was a British landscape-painter in water-colours, a published teacher of painting. Father of John Robert Cozens.-Life:...
.
The first paintings to enter Beaumont's collection were by artists he knew, but a
Grand TourThe Grand Tour was the traditional travel 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...
which he undertook with his wife Margaret (née Willes) in 1782 widened his taste to include the
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 LorrainClaude Lorrain, traditionally just Claude in English was an artist of the Baroque era who was active in Italy, and is admired for his achievements in landscape painting.-Early years:Lorrain was born in 1604 or 1605 into poverty in the town of Champagne, Vosges...
, 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 SquareGrosvenor Square is a large garden square in the exclusive Mayfair district of London, England. It is the centrepiece of the Mayfair property of the Dukes of Westminster, and takes its name from their surname, "Grosvenor"....
, 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
ToryToryism is a traditionalist political philosophy, which grew out of the Cavalier faction in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It is most prominent in Great Britain, but also features in some parts of The Commonwealth — particularly in Canada...
MP for
Beer AlstonBere 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
DevonDevon is a large county in England. The county is also referred to as Devonshire, although that is an unofficial name, rarely used inside of the county itself and often indicating a traditional or historical context. The county shares borders with Cornwall to the west and Dorset and Somerset to...
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 AcademyThe Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London, England. 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...
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 DistrictThe Lake District, also known as The Lakes or Lakeland, is a rural area in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous for its lakes and its mountains , and its associations with the early 19th century poetry and writings of William Wordsworth and the Lake Poets.The central and...
and of
North WalesNorth Wales is the northernmost unofficial region of Wales, bordered to the south by Mid Wales and to the east by England.It comprises the island of Anglesey, the Llŷn peninsula and the Snowdonia mountain range, together with the catchments of the Rivers Conwy, Clwyd and Dee with the River Dyfi...
, necessitated by Sir George's having caught a fever during his Grand Tour. For their Welsh excursions they rented Benarth, a house near
ConwyConwy, formerly known in English as Conway, is a town and community in Conwy County Borough on the north coast of Wales; it faces Deganwy across the River Conwy. The town formerly lay in Gwynedd and prior to that in Caernarfonshire...
, where they were visited by
Uvedale PriceSir Uvedale Price , 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
PicturesquePicturesque is an aesthetic ideal first introduced into English cultural debate in 1782 by William Gilpin in Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc...
movement and in Flemish and Dutch painting and landscaping the grounds at Coleorton Hall, Beaumont's country house in
LeicestershireLeicestershire or , abbreviation Leics.is a landlocked county in central England. 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 YoungerGeorge 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. He was hailed by Sir John Summerson as "among the few really outstanding architects of the century",...
from 1804 to 1808. A friend of the
Lake PoetsThe Lake Poets 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 WordsworthWilliam 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 ColeridgeSamuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was one of the founders of the Romantic Movement in England and one of the Lake Poets...
, 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 CathedralSt Paul's Cathedral is the Anglican cathedral on Ludgate Hill in the City of London and the seat of the Bishop of London. The present building dates from the 17th century and is generally reckoned to be London's fifth St Paul's Cathedral, not counting every major medieval reconstruction as a new...
from 1802 and was the founding director of the
British InstitutionThe British Institution was a private 19th-century club in London formed to exhibit the works of living and dead artists. Unlike the Royal Academy it admitted only connoisseurs to its membership...
(established in 1806). 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 ReynoldsSir Joshua Reynolds RA FRS FRSA was an important and influential 18th century English painter, specialising in portraits and promoting the "Grand Style" in painting which depended on idealisation of the imperfect. He was one of the founders and first President of the Royal Academy...
, he was one of
J. M. W. TurnerJoseph Mallord William Turner RA was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker, whose style is said to have laid the foundation for Impressionism. Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape 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 HearneThomas Hearn , English antiquarian, was born at Littlefield Green in the parish of White Waltham, Berkshire.-Life:...
. Nonetheless, Beaumont did welcome some sympathetic artists, including the young
John ConstableJohn 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
cenotaphA cenotaph is a tomb or a monument erected in honor of a person or group of persons 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...
erected to Reynolds in the grounds at Coleorton (painted 1833–6; now in the National Gallery).
After the publication in 1815–16 of a series of satirical "
Catalogues Raisonnés" (apparently by a group of disaffected artists) ridiculing Beaumont for his conservatism, he retired from public life to Coleorton. A visit to Italy in 1821 in which he met
Antonio CanovaAntonio Canova was an Italian sculptor who became famous for his marble sculptures that delicately rendered nude flesh...
restored his morale, and while there he bought the
Taddei Tondo by
MichelangeloMichelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer...
, 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 LiverpoolRobert Banks Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool PC was a British politician and the longest-serving Prime Minister of the United Kingdom since the Union with Ireland in 1801...
's government on the condition that they buy the collection of
John Julius AngersteinJohn Julius Angerstein , London merchant, Lloyd's under-writer, and patron of the fine arts, was born in St Petersburg, Russia and settled in London in about 1749...
, 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 GalleryThe National Gallery in London, founded in 1824, houses a rich collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900 in its home on Trafalgar Square...
opened to the public in May 1824 in Angerstein's former house on
Pall MallPall Mall is a street in the City of Westminster, London, situated in SW1 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...
, 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 GalleryThe 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
LeicesterLeicester is a city and unitary authority area in the East Midlands of England. It is 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.
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