Portrait of Henry Fane, M.P. (1703-1777), of Wormsley, Oxfordshire, half-length, in a gold-embroidered pink velvet coat and waistcoat, a tricorne hat under his arm, in a feigned oval

oil on canvas

30 1/8 x 25 in. (76.5 x 63.5 cm.)

The sitter was the third son of Henry Fane of Brympton, Somerset (1669-1726), and his wife Anne, sister of John Scrope, M.P., of Wormsley. After Scrope died without issue, Wormsley passed to the Fane family and remained in their ownership for over three centuries, until 1986.

Chief Clerk to the Treasury in 1742-57 and Clerk to the Privy Council from 1756 until he resigned in 1764, Henry Fane was Member of Parliament for Lyme Regis from 1757 until his death in 1777, always supporting the administration in office. He first married Charlotte (d. 1739), only daughter of the poet Nicholas Rowe; their daughter married William Quintin, who went on to be a major patron of Gainsborough. This portrait however descended to Mary, a daughter from the sitter's second marriage to Anne, daughter of the Rt. Rev. John Wynne, Bishop of Bath and Wells, who married Sir Thomas Stapleton, 5th Bt. (1727-1781).

PROVENANCE

By descent through the sitter's second daughter Mary, wife of Sir Thomas Stapleton, 5th Bt. (1727-1781), to the following,

Sir Miles Talbot Stapleton, 9th Bt. (1893-1977), Greys Court, Henley-on-Thames; Christie's, London, 26 March 1926, lot 10 (440 gns. to Leggatt).

with David Croal Thomson, Barbizon House, London, 1927.

Sir Edgar Vincent, 1st Viscount D'Abernon (1857-1941), 1927, and by inheritance to his widow,

Helen Vincent, Viscountess D'Abernon, Manor House, Stoke D'Abernon, Surrey; (†) Christie's, London, 18 March 1955, lot 40 (700 gns. to Agnews).

with Thomas Agnew and Sons, London, from whom acquired in August 1957 by the following,