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THE ‘GLOUCESTER BENEFACTORS’ AFTER FOUR CENTURIES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 March 2015

Robert Tittler
Robert Tittler*
Affiliation:
Robert Tittler, FSA, Department of History, Concordia University, 7141 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H4B 1R6. Email: Tittler@vax2.concordia.ca
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Abstract

Some time in the early years of the seventeenth century, the city fathers of Gloucester evidently commissioned twelve paintings of past benefactors to that city. The paintings survive in the Gloucester Folk Museum and were exhibited in the spring of 2014 to mark the approximate date of their four-hundredth anniversary. Given the absence of critically important sources that would have given precise information on their commissioning, their origin and history have remained somewhat obscure. This paper nevertheless strives to understand why, and by whom, they may have been painted, and why they remain significant today, both to the City of Gloucester and to the history of English portraiture. It argues that they were commissioned to bolster a sense of community identity and to encourage further benefaction at a time of local hardship and stress. It comments on them as examples of the regional English vernacular style in portraiture of the day, reflects on their current condition and very tentatively suggests who might have painted them.

Résumé

Au début du XVIIe siècle, les édiles de la ville de Gloucester commandèrent apparemment le portrait de douze bienfaiteurs de cette ville. Ces portraits, qui existent encore, se trouvent au Gloucester Folk Museum furent exposés au printemps 2014 pour marquer la date à approximative de leur quatre-centième anniversaire. Comme on ne dispose pas d’informations suffisantes sur les circonstances de la commande, leur origine et leur histoire demeurent plutôt obscures. Le présent exposé tente néanmoins d’expliquer pourquoi, et par qui, ils pourraient avoir été peints, et pourquoi ils conservent leur importance aujourd’hui, tant pour la ville de Gloucester que pour l’histoire de l’art du portrait anglais. L’auteur essaye de démontrer qu’ils ont été commandés pour renforcer le sentiment d’identité locale et pour encourager d’autres bienfaiteurs à se manifester à une époque où la ville traversait des privations et des difficultés. Il les commente en tant qu’exemples du style vernaculaire anglais régional de l’art du portrait de l’époque, il poursuit une réflexion sur leur état actuel et suggère très prudement qui pourrait les avoir peints.

Zusammenfassung

Irgendwann in den frühen Jahren des 17. Jahrhunderts gaben die Stadtväter von Gloucester offensichtlich zwölf Portraits vergangener Wohltäter der Stadt in Auftrag. Diese Gemälde sind im Gloucester Folk Museum erhalten und wurden im Frühling des Jahres 2014 ausgestellt, um damit das ungefähre Datum ihres 400-jährigen Jubiläums zu markieren. In Ermangelung kritisch bedeutsamer Quellen, anhand derer man genaue Informationen zur ihrer Beauftragung hätte einholen können, sind ihr Ursprung und ihre Geschichte relativ unbekannt geblieben. In dieser Abhandlung wird dennoch versucht, nachzuvollziehen, weshalb und von wem diese Bilder gemalt worden sind und weshalb sie auch heute noch für die Stadt Gloucester und die Geschichte der englischen Portraitkunst von Bedeutung sind. Es spricht dafür, dass sie in Auftrag gegeben worden waren, um ein Gefühl der gemeinschaftlichen Identität zu fördern und zu einer Zeit von lokaler Not und Belastung weitere Wohltaten anzuregen. Die Abhandlung sieht darin Beispiele des traditionellen englischen Portraitstils jener Zeit, sie befasst sich mit ihrem gegenwärtigen Zustand und sie erbringt den vorsichtigen Vorschlag, wer sie gemalt haben könnte.

Type
Papers
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 95 , September 2015 , pp. 305 - 324
Copyright
© The Society of Antiquaries of London 2015 

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Footnotes

1

My thanks to Nigel Cox, Curator of the Gloucester Folk Museum, now retired, for arranging my inspection of these paintings at several times over a number of years, to Dr Tarnya Cooper, now Chief Curator of the National Portrait Gallery, who accompanied me to examine these paintings on site on 7 May 2009, and to the staff of the Gloucester Museum for inviting me to speak about them on two occasions.

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