Lot 64: Portrait of John Rolle Walter (1712-1779), three-quarter-length, in a fur-trimmed blue coat, leaning on a plinth

Pompeo Girolamo Batoni (Lucca 1708-1787 Rome)
Portrait of John Rolle Walter (1712-1779), three-quarter-length, in a fur-trimmed blue coat, leaning on a plinth
with identifying inscription 'John Rolle Walter Esq' (lower right)
oil on canvas
38 5/8 x 28¾ in. (98.1 x 73.3 cm.)

Bristol, City Museum and Art Gallery, on loan, 2006-7.

By inheritance from the sitter to his nephew John, 1st Baron Rolle (1756-1842), by whom bequeathed to his nephew by marriage,
the Hon. Mark Kerr Rolle, formerly Trefusis (1835-1907), and by inheritance to the latter's nephew,
Charles John Robert Trefusis, 21st Baron Clinton (1863-1957), by whom presented to the Great Torrington Almshouse, Town Lands and Poors Charity for the Town Hall, Torrington.

THE PROPERTY OF A CHARITABLE TRUST


John Rolle, was the second son of John Rolle, M.P. of Stevenstone in Devon and his wife, Isabella Charlotte, daughter of Sir William Walter, 2nd Bt., of Sarsden, Oxfordshire. His ancestor, George Rolle, had bought Stevenstone in the reign of King Henry VIII. Rolle's elder brother Henry, who succeeded their father in 1730, sat, in the Tory interest, as member of parliament for Devon in 1730-41 and for Barnstaple from 1741 until 1748, when he was elevated as Lord Rolle, Baron of Stevenstone. John followed his elder brother to New College, Oxford, in 1729. On the death of his maternal uncle, Sir Robert Walter, 4th Bt. in 1731, he inherited Sarsden and took the name of Walter. He succeeded to the Rolle estates on the death of his older brother in 1750. Rolle Walter was elected unopposed as member of parliament for Exeter in 1754 and retained that seat until 1772, thereafter holding one of the two seats for the county of Devon until his death. A Tory, he is not known to have spoken in the House: he was in the early 1760s a supporter of the government, but voted with the opposition in the parliament of 1768. An observation in connection with the contractors' bill of 12 February 1779 records him as 'pro, absent, query doubtful', and he clearly epitomised the independent-minded country member. He was succeeded by his fourth brother, Denys Rolle (?1725-1797), M.P. for Barnstaple in 1761-1774, whose son John (1756-1842), followed John Rolle Walter as member for Devon in 1780, and was elevated as Baron Rolle in 1796, a year before the father's death. Lord Rolle's heir was his wife's nephew, the Hon. Mark George Kerr Rolle, formerly Trefusis: in 1883 the Devon estate was of 55,592 acres.

John Walter travelled in Italy in 1752-3 with his older first cousin, the Rev. Edward Rolle (1703-1791), son of Robert Rolle of Meeth, who had matriculated at New College in 1723 and eventually became Prebendary of Salisbury. Edward Rolle was a friend of the much- travelled Joseph Spence (1699-1768), whose Anecdotes are so informative. The two cousins, presumably after a preliminary visit to Rome, were at Capua en route to or from Naples on 12 November 1752: they lodged at the Casa Guarnieri, Rome, at Easter 1753 and subsequently visited Florence, Padua and Venice, reaching Mainz on 12 July. In addition to securing this previously unrecorded portrait, Walter apparently ordered two landscapes from Richard Wilson, who was then in Rome, the Rome from the Ponte Molle at Cardiff and a Diana and Acteon in a private collection.

As Spence's correspondence establishes, Edward Rolle's party was to be joined at the Casa Guarnieri by the great-nephew of Rolle Walter's grandmother, Sackville Tufton, Lord Tufton, subsequently 8th Earl of Thanet. Others staying there for Easter 1753 included Frederick, Lord North, subsequently Prime Minister, and his stepbrother, William Legge, 2nd Earl of Dartmouth. They and Lord Thanet were also painted by Batoni (A.M. Clark, ed. E. P. Bowron, Pompeo Batoni, A Complete Catalogue of his Works with an Introductory Text , Oxford, 1985, nos. 177, 192 and 195), while Dartmouth too was also an early patron of Wilson. The rediscovery of this portrait makes it possible to identify Rolle Walter as the subject of the related portrait head, measuring 18 by 13¾ inches at Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst; Clark, no. 290), previously dated circa to 1765. Both portraits presumably date from 1753, and thus are among the group of works which helped to establish Batoni's credentials as the portrait painter most in demand with English visitors to Rome.