Lot 95: SCOTT, Sir Walter (1771-1832)-- Benjamin Robert HAYDON (1786-1846). Portrait of Sir Walter Scott

SCOTT, Sir Walter (1771-1832)-- Benjamin Robert HAYDON (1786-1846). Portrait of Sir Walter Scott in black and white chalk, lips touched with red chalk, on oatmeal paper, 200 x 152mm, framed and glazed.
Provenance. Rev. William Aldwin Soames (his sale, Foster, 14 March 1866, lot 140); possibly F.S. Child, 1932; the Hon. Christopher Lennox-Boyd, his anon. sale, Christie's, 5 November 1974 (lot 111), bt Austen, 30 gns; private collection.

Listed by Francis Russell, Portraits of Sir Walter Scott: a study of romantic portraiture (1987), no.82, who notes the accounts by both Scott ('Breakfasted with Haydon and sate for my head') and Haydon for the sitting on 5 May 1828. Haydon's is more circumstantial: 'Sir Walter came to breakfast... He sat to me afterwards for an hour and 1/2, and a delightful sitting it was. i hit his expression exactly. Sir Walter Scott seemed depressed... [he] has certainly the most penetrating look I ever saw, except in Shakespeare's portraits'. Haydon still had the portrait in 1832, when he offered it to Lord Francis Egerton.

This lot will be subject to VAT at the rate of 17.5% on the buyer's premium only.