Lot 243: AFTER CORNELIUS JOHNSON

AFTER CORNELIUS JOHNSON LONDON 1593 - 1661 UTRECHT PORTRAIT OF SIR HENRY SPELMAN (C.1564-1641) inscribed centre left: SIR HENRY SPELMAN oil on canvas 126.5 by 103.5 cm.; 49 3/4 by 40 3/4 in.

London, British Institution, 1848, no. 91;
Plymouth, City Museum and Art Gallery, Painting in the Clarendon Collection, 1954, no. 13;
Plymouth, CIty Museum and Art Gallery, on long term loan until 2010

BM Add. MS 6391, ff 77 (The Grove, 1764, no. 18);
G. P. Harding, List of Portraits, Pictures in Various Mansions in the United Kingdom, unpublished MS 1804, Vol. II, p. 211;
Lady T. Lewis, Lives of the Friends and Contemporaries of Lord Chancellor Clarendon, London 1852, Vol. III, no. 23, pp. 256 and 305-306;
D. Piper, Catalogue of Seventeenth-Century Portraits in the National Portrait Gallery, Cambridge 1963, pp. 324-325;
R. Gibson, Catalogue of Portraits in the Collection of the Earl of Clarendon, Wallop 1977, no. 130, pp. 117-118

Comissioned by Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon (1609-1674), for his gallery at Clarendon House, London;
by descent to his son, Henry Hyde, 2υnd Earl of Clarendon (1638-1709), at Cornbury Park, Oxfordshire;
by descent, at Cornbury, and later The Grove, Hertfordshire, to his nephew, Henry Hyde, 2nd Earl of Rochester and later 4th Earl of Clarendon (1672-1753);
transferred to his son, Henry Hyde, 5υth Baron Hyde and Viscount Cornbury (1710-1753), in 1749, who died without issue;
by descent to his niece, Charlotte (d.1790), eldest daughter of William Capell, 3rd Earl of Essex (1697-1743), who married Thomas Villiers, 1st Earl of Clarendon (1709-1786), of the second creation;
thence by descent to the present owner

Spelman was a famous antiquary and historian, much respected by Clarendon and his contemporaries for his detailed collections of medieval records. The present painting is based on the prime portrait by Johnson of which a head and shoulders dated 1628 was last recorded by Vertue in the collection of the Earl of Hardwicke. Another version is also in the Royal Society collection.