| 4 |
 | 4th Baron Suffield, son of Edward, who raised Stephen and Caroline Lambton at Gunton Hall.
Provenance
Presumably commissioned by Edward, 4th Baron Suffield (1813-1853) for Gunton Park, Norfolk and by descent at Gunton Park until
sold by the Trustees of the Gunton Park Estate; Messrs. Irelands, Hanworth, Norfolk, 16, 17, 25 and 26 September 1980, lot 1705.
with Thomas Agnew & Sons Ltd., London, by whom sold on 7 July 1981.
Literature
Prince F. Duleep Singh, Portraits in Norfolk Houses, Norwich, 1928, p. 189, no. 16.
Lot Notes
This magnificent group portrait is one of Reinagle's most successful compositions. The sitters in elegant sporting dress are informally arranged against a background of gentle autumnal colours. It is likely to have been painted shortly after the marriage of Edward Vernon, 4th Baron Suffield, to Charlotte Susannah, only daughter of Alan Hyde, 2nd Baron Gardner, on 1st September 1835.
Edward Vernon, 4th Baron Suffield (1813-1853) was the eldest son of Edward, 3rd Lord Suffield, by his first wife Georgiana, daughter and heiress of George, 2nd Baron Gardner. Edward, 3rd Baron Suffield, an active politician, was as a young man known for his flamboyant dress and his sporting prowess, particularly in running, and he often raced professional atheletes. He died at his London home, Vernon House in Park Place, on 6 July 1835, after falling from his horse on Constitution Hill and was buried at the family seat, Gunton Park. His son succeeded to the title and married Charlotte Susannah, daughter of Alan Hyde, 2nd Baron Gardner, by Charlotte, his second wife, third daughter of Robert, 1st Lord Carrington. The 4th Baron Suffield spent much time hunting in Leicester and was made Master of the Quorn Hunt in 1838. He lost a great sum racing and was forced in 1839 to sell all of his horses. He died on 22 August 1853 and his wife, Charlotte, Lady Suffield, died on 15 August 1859, without issue. Georgiana Mary, elder daughter of the 3rd Lord Suffield, married firstly on 2 October 1837, George Edward Anson, C.B., who died in 1849 and secondly on 24 October 1855, Charles Edward Boothby, third son of Sir William Boothby, 8th Bt. She died on 13 November 1903.
The family is shown with gamekeepers and dogs before the family seat Gunton Park in Norfolk. Throughout the 19th century Gunton was one of the great estates of Norfolk. The Harbords, said to be a Welsh family, came to Norfolk when Sir Charles Harbord (d. 1679), surveyor-general to King Charles I and King Charles II, purchased an estate at Stanninghall. John, his fourth son purchased Gunton before 1647 and having no children, the inheritance passed to his nephew, Harbord Cropley who assumed the name and arms of Harbord. When he died childless in 1742, the estate again passed to a nephew, Sir William Morden (c.1696-1770) who took the Harbord name. Sir William employed the architect, Matthew Brettingham (1725-1803), and work began soon after he inherited the estate to build a Palladian villa. Gunton is thought to have been one of Brettingham's earliest Norfolk houses, he also worked on Hunningham and Hanworth, and in 1761, published the plans of Holkam without acknowledgement to their real author, William Kent.
Sir William's son and successor, Sir Harbord Harbord, 2nd Bt., created Baron Suffield in 1786, employed the celebrated architect James Wyatt (1746-1813) to improve the house. He set aside £40,000 for that purpose, the whole of which was spent on building the office block, the finest and most complete example of the kind at that time and which 'prefigure [s] by half a century the elaborate service wings and courtyards added to virtually every major house in Victorian times' (M. Binney, 'Gunton Park, Norfolk', Country Life, 21 December 1989, p. 50). Samuel and his brother William added an eight bay colonnade of Tuscan columns to the south front with a conservatory at either end.
Edward, 3rd Baron Suffield, continued the building work when he inherited the estate in 1821, adding bedrooms and apartments, building the cricket club and bringing in the deer to make Gunton House a Park. By 1830 he had completed his Observatory Tower on Pheasant Hill, a three storey glazed tower, observatory and arch, with surrounding parkland planted by William Sawrey Gilpin (1761/2-1843), landscape gardener and artist. The 3rd Lord Suffield also laid out the fine ornamental gardens named 'Emily's Bower' after his first wife.
Edward, 4th Baron Suffield, was a keen sportman and used Gunton primarily as a hunting lodge. His half-brother, Charles, who succeeded to the estate, was much favoured at Court and entertained the Prince of Wales there many times; the Prince and Princess stayed there in 1869 while renovations were carried out at Sandringham. Unfortunately, while the estate was let out to E.M. Mundy of Shipley Hall, Derbyshire, for shooting in 1882, a fire started in the library chimney and gutted much of the house. After the 5th Baron Suffield's death in 1914, Gunton never regained its former splendour. The last member of the family to live at the house was the Hon. Doris Cecilia Harbord, the elder daughter of the 6th Lord Suffield. The house was extensively restored and sympathetically renovated in the 1980s by Kit Martin who converted it into houses and apartments.
From an early age Reinagle, the eldest son of the artist Philip Reinagle (1748-1833) and his wife Jane, showed a precocious talent for painting; he exhibited his first picture at the Royal Academy, at the age of twelve. He went to Europe to study landscape painting and the Old Masters between 1793 and 1798 where he learnt to paint landscape. In 1805 he joined the Society of Painters in Water Colours, and served as its president from 1808 to 1812. He was elected associate of the Royal Academy in 1814 and a full academician in 1823 when he assisted with the restoration of Leonardo da Vinci's cartoon The Virgin and child (National Gallery, London). He continued to exhibit fashionable society portraits and landscapes at the Royal Academy until 1857 and died at his house at 3 Leader Street, Chelsea, on 17 November 1862.
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Edward Harbord., 3rd Lord Suffield
Edward Vernon Harbord., 4th Baron Suffield
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