Beschreibung:

GEORGE, 1ST MARQUESS TOWNSHEND, 1769 Thomas Hickey (1741-1824)
Signature: signed and dated lower left Medium: oil on canvas Dimensions: 74 by 47cm., 29 by 18.5in. Provenance: The sitter's family by descent George, 4th Viscount and 1st Marquess Townshend, was born in 1724 at Raynham Hall, Norfolk. He was educated at St John’s College, Cambridge, and afterwards served with the British army in Germany. In ... 1746 he was at the Battle of Culloden, where the Jacobite rebellion was put down. After further service on the Continent, Townshend joined James Wolfe’s expedition to Quebec, where he commanded one of three brigades against the French. At the battle on the Plains of Abraham Wolfe was mortally wounded and the second-in-command, Robert Monckton, disabled. Townshend thus took command and took possession of Quebec on 18 September 1759. He returned to Britain and received a colonelcy and the thanks of the parliament. In 1767 he was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, a post he held until 1772. He had eight children by his first wife, Charlotte Compton, 15th Baroness Ferrers of Chartley and 7th Baroness Compton, who died in 1770. Three years later he married Anne Montgomery, with whom he had a further six children, all born in Dublin. In 1784, twenty-three years before he succeeded his father, he was created Earl of Leicester, and in 1787 he was created Marquess Townshend. In 1769 Dublin Corporation commissioned Thomas Hickey to paint Townshend’s portrait in appreciation of his success in securing the passage of the Octennial Act, which limited the duration of Irish Parliaments to eight years, ensuring regular elections. Hickey painted two versions, identical apart from size, showing Townshend holding a copy of the Octennial Act. The larger version was clearly conceived as a companion to Sir Joshua Reynolds’ portrait of the previous Viceroy, the Earl of Northumberland, 1765; both works hang in identical carved Rococo frames (attributed to Richard Cranfield) either side of the drawing room fireplace in the Mansion House, Dublin. The present smaller version may have been exhibited in the year it was painted at the Society of Artists, Dublin (as Portrait of a nobleman, whole length, catalogue no. 31) and has remained in the sitter’s family to the present day more