The National Gallery – IMS Photography

Portrait of Charles William Lambton (‘The Red Boy’)

Ian Malpass-Scott — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 18:00:00 +0000

This portrait of Charles William Lambton – aged six or seven – was commissioned by the boy’s father John George Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham, a Whig politician and MP for County Durham. Popularly known as The Red Boy, it remained in the Lambton family until it was acquired by the National Gallery in 2021. It is acknowledged as one of Thomas Lawrence’s masterpieces and, a sign of the image’s enduring popularity, it was the first painting to be reproduced on a British postage stamp in 1967.

Sitting on a promontory overlooking a moonlit sea, Lawrence portrays Lambton as a child wanderer, lost in contemplation of the sublime power of nature. The flowers opening next to him symbolise his young age. He is at the beginning of his journey through life, though this was cut short – he died of tuberculosis aged only thirteen. Lawrence may have been inspired by the work of Lord Byron or by William Wordsworth’s poem There was a Boy (1798).

Unlike Gainsborough’s famous portrait, The Blue Boy (1770, The Huntington Art Museum, San Marino) who wears a seventeenth-century ‘Van Dyck’ costume, The Red Boy is dressed in the contemporary children’s fashion of loose-fitting clothes. Several of Lawrence’s young sitters wear these red velvet ‘skeleton suits’ which were roomier and better for playing outdoors and which, by 1800, had replaced Van Dyck dress for children of wealthy families.

Provenance: Commissioned by John George Lambton (1792–1840), 1st Earl of Durham; by family descent to Edward Lambton, 7th Earl of Durham, who offered the painting through Christie’s; bought with the support of the American Friends of the National Gallery, the Estate of Miss Gillian Cleaver, Art Fund (with a contribution from the Wolfson Foundation), The Al Thani Collection Foundation, The Manny and Brigitta Davidson Charitable Foundation and through private appeal, 2021.

Text from The National Gallery

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: The National Gallery, London
Material: Oil on canvas
Artist: Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769 – 1830)
Date: 1825

Image Details
Date: 10 April 2025
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/31s
ISO: 320
Licensing: Image of a National Gallery asset. This image cannot be licensed.

Charles William Lambton (detail)

Whistlejacket

Ian Malpass-Scott — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 17:56:00 +0000

One of the most important British paintings of the eighteenth century, Whistlejacket is probably the most well-known portrait of a horse. It is also widely acknowledged to be George Stubbs’s masterpiece. The Arabian chestnut stallion had won a famous victory at York in 1759, but by 1762 had been retired from racing. He belonged to the 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, who commissioned Stubbs to paint a commemorative life-size portrait of his prize horse on a scale that was more appropriate for a group portrait or historical painting.

Stubbs excludes any reference to a rider, riding equipment or location, painting the magnificent rearing horse against a neutral background of pale gold. Despite suggestions that a rider was originally planned, Whistlejacket was always meant to be unmounted. Free from human control, the riderless horse is the embodiment of unrestrained natural energy, a free spirit that prefigures Romanticism’s celebration of nature.

Provenance: Commissioned by Charles Watson Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham (d.s.p. 1782); his nephew and principal heir, William Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, 2nd Earl Fitzwilliam, then by descent to the 10th Earl Fitzwilliam (d. 1979); Trustees of the Rt. Hon. Olive, Countess Fitzwilliam’s Chattels Settlement, from whom purchased with the support of the Heritage Lottery Fund and private donations by the National Gallery 1997.

Text from The National Gallery

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: The National Gallery, London
Material: Oil on canvas
Artist: George Stubbs (1724 – 1806)
Date: about 1762

Whistlejacket (detail)

An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump

Ian Malpass-Scott — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 17:50:00 +0000

An audience has gathered around a lecturer to watch an experiment. It is night, and the room is lit by a single candle that burns behind a large rounded glass containing a diseased human skull. A white cockatoo has been placed in a glass container from which the air is being pumped to create a vacuum. Will the lecturer expel the air completely and kill the bird, or allow the air back in and revive it? Wright focuses on the viewers‘ differing reactions – from the girl unable to watch to the lovers with eyes only for each other.

This is the largest, most ambitious and dramatic of the series of ’candlelight’ pictures Wright painted during the 1760s. It captures the drama of a staged scientific experiment but it also functions as a vanitas – a painting concerning the passing of time, the limits of human knowledge and the frailty of life itself.

Provenance: Purchased from the artist and taken to Paris in 1824 by the Anglo-French dealer John Arrowsmith; reputedly sold by him in 1825 to an anon, client (possibly to another dealer, the disposal of his stock being enforced by financial difficulties); anon, sale, Henry, Paris, 31 March–1 April 1828 (additional lot, unnumbered), bt by the impresario and collector Jean-François Boursault; among 80 pictures from Boursault’s collection purchased c. 1838 by Henry Artaria for the collection of Edmund Higginson, Saltmarsh Castle, Herefordshire; Higginson sale, Christie’s June 1846 (77), bt by the dealer Thomas Rought; subsequently with the dealer D.T. White, from whom purchased by 1853 by George Young; his sale Christie’s 19 May 1866 (25), bt Cox for Henry Vaughan, by whom presented to the National Gallery 1886.

Text from The National Gallery

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: The National Gallery, London
Material: Oil on canvas
Artist: Joseph Wright ‘of Derby’ (1734 – 1797)
Date: 1768

Image Details
Date: 10 April 2025
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/24s
ISO: 800
Licensing: Image of a National Gallery asset. This image cannot be licensed.

The Hay Wain

Ian Malpass-Scott — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 17:48:00 +0000

The view is of the millpond at Flatford on the River Stour. Flatford Mill was a watermill for grinding corn, operated by the Constable family for nearly a hundred years. It still survives and is about a mile from Constable’s birthplace at East Bergholt, Suffolk. The house on the left also survives; in Constable’s time it was occupied by tenant farmer Willy Lott.

The title, The Hay Wain, refers to the wooden wagon (wain) used for transporting cut and dried meadow grass (hay). The empty wagon is making its way through the shallow water to cross to the meadow on the other side where haymakers are at work.

Although the painting evokes a Suffolk scene, it was created in the artist’s studio in London. Working from a number of open-air sketches made over several years, Constable then made a full-size preparatory oil sketch to establish the composition before painting the final picture.

Text from The National Gallery

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: The National Gallery, London
Material: Oil on canvas
Artist: John Constable (1776 – 1837)
Date: 1821

Image Details
Date: 10 April 2025
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/40s
ISO: 400
Licensing: Image of a National Gallery asset. This image cannot be licensed.

Portrait of Jacobus Blauw

Ian Malpass-Scott — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 16:37:00 +0000

The Dutch patriot, Jacobus Blauw (1756–1829), played an important role in the foundation of the Batavian Republic in 1795. Although short-lived, it significantly contributed to the transformation of the Netherlands from a confederated structure into a democratic unitary state.

Blauw and the artist, Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), shared the political ideals of the French Revolution that were sweeping across Europe in the 1790s, and the bond between the two men is evident in the relaxed intimacy of this portrait. David depicts the diplomat Blauw as he pauses while writing, his clothes and possessions painted in meticulous detail.

There are only two paintings by David in Britain – this, and the National Gallery’s Portrait of Comtesse Vilain XIIII and her Daughter.

Provenance: With the sitter until his death in 1829; bequeathed to his only daughter, Cornelia‐Marguerite‐Jeanne de Blancheville (née Blauw) (1787–1847), and thereafter by descent in the family to Cornélie‐Pulcherie‐Augustine Clavière (1833–1891), Blauw’s last direct descendant, wife of the painter and collector Jean‐Jules Chevrier (1816–1883), whose daughter, Cornélie‐Joséphine‐Louise Chevrier (1855–1930), married Honoré Luce (1847–1932); recorded in 1913 with M. Luce‐Chevrier; ‘given’ by Henriette Luce‐Chevrier (Mme Georges Gruère) in 1968 to the Musée des Beaux‐Arts de Dijon, the ‘gift’ being rescinded following her title being challenged by members of the Chevrier family; sold in 1970 to the Wildenstein Gallery (the sale being unsuccessfully challenged by other members of the family); with Wildenstein & Cie, Paris, in 1978, when first offered to the Gallery for $1,200,000; acquired in 1984 (following a protracted negotiation for a French export licence) for $3,200,000, paid at the direction of Guy Wildenstein to Dr Adrian Hinderling, Zurich.

Text from The National Gallery

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: The National Gallery, London
Material: Oil on canvas
Artist: Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825)
Date: 1795

Image Details
Date: 10 April 2025
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/24s
ISO: 400
Licensing: Image of a National Gallery asset. This image cannot be licensed.