RICHARD COSWAY (BRITISH 1742-1821)
Portrait miniature of George Spencer Churchill, 5th Duke of Marlborough (Marquess of Blandford) 1766-1840, circa 1817, wearing historical fancy dress consisting of armour under a red cloak fastened with a buckle on the shoulder
watercolour on ivory
gilt-metal ormolu hexagonal frame
hexagonal, 67 mm (2 3/4 in) high

PROVENANCE:
The Marshall Papers, Miss Sarah Marshall Bernstein, a direct descendant of Duke and Matilda Glover

Lord Blandford represented Oxfordshire in parliament as a Whig between 1790 and 1796 and Tregony as a Tory between 1802 and 1806. From 1804 to 1806 he served under William Pitt the Younger as Lord of the Treasury. The latter year he was summoned to the House of Lords through a writ acceleration in his father's barony of Spencer of Wormleighton. He became famous for his extravagant collecting of antiquities, especially books. He was invested as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (FSA) on 8th December 1803.

Although the Marquess was born and baptised with the name George Spencer, soon after succeeding to the Dukedom of Marlborough, he had it legally changed on the 26th of May 1817 to George Spencer-Chruchill. This illustrious name did not, however, save him from his mounting debts and his estates were seized and his collections sold. He retired to Blenheim Palace where he lived the remainder of his life off a small annuity granted to the first Duke by Queen Anne. George served as Lord of the Treasury to King George III. Matilda Glover, a local girl, became his mistress in 1817, causing the resident Duchess to leave Blenheim Palace. Matilda then assumed the position moving into the Palace and bearing the Duke three children. Marlborough was one of Cosway's most important patrons. His full size portrait of the Duke of Marlborough, 1797 was exhibited in Richard and Cosway, Regency Artist of Taste and Fashion at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh 1995-1996. Dr. Lloyd curator of that exhibition dates this portrait to the start of the Duke's affair with Glover and believes it to be probably the last miniature to be painted by Cosway. Cosway often used the hexagonal format in his later works, as he also used soft brown and grey tones, as depicted here, which marked a move away from the Antwerp blue sky backgrounds found in his miniatures at the end of the 18th century.

This lot is subject to CITES regulations