Lot 137: English School (circa 1788)

Sir Henry Charles Englefield, 7th Bt (1752-1822), wearing burgundy coloured coat, white cravat and frilled shirt, his hair powdered, landscape background gold frame, the reverse glazed to reveal plaited brown hair
Oval, 84mm. (3 3/8ins.) high

H.M., 1999
P.A., 1999
S.N.P.G., 2000-2003

S.P.N.F., no.68

The present lot is after a portrait of Englefield by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Painted circa 1787, the oil portrait is rectangular and shows more of the wooded background behind the sitter. This portrait is now untraced but in 1969, it is known to have been in the D. Trapper Lomax Collection. Englefield was painted by many artists, including Thomas Lawrence, Joseph Scott and Henry Edridge. In 1923, a tiny medalet of Englefield was given to the National Portrait Gallery by a Miss J. B. Horner.
Another miniature of the same subject, but identified as the Hon. William Robert Spencer (1769-1834) was sold Christies, London, 10 December 2002, lot 241 (School of Nixon).
Sir Henry Charles Englefield was an antiquary and scientific writer. He had a broad range of interests ranging from the orbits of the comets and the geology of the Isle of Wight to Roman antiquities. He was President of the Society of Antiquaries, (1811-12), Secretary of the Dilettanti Society and Fellow of the Royal Society. When be died, blind and unmarried, the baronetcy became extinct.