The Lord Crathorne’s favourite painting
The peer chooses a powerful portrait of an entrepreneur
IN January 1901, Queen Victoria died. Victorian exhibitions had been dominated by story pictures with a moral or inspiring message, but the great names of Victorian art—millais, Burne-jones, Leighton, Watts— had no successors. Portraiture was the vogue under Edward VII, dominating such events as the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition. Its status rose with the popularity of old portraits among American as well as British collectors. Prices for works by Reynolds, Gainsborough, Raeburn and Lawrence soared, along with those for Old Masters.
It was appropriate that the cosmopolitan American Sargent, Paris-trained and Londonbased, should be pre-eminent: the first choice of old money upholding noble lineage, and upwardly mobile new money. Sargent’s full Edwardian flowering—‘le Van Dyck de l’epoque’ (Rodin)—coincided with the enlargement—‘fort luxeusement’ (Monet)— of his studio in Tite Street, Chelsea. His annual income in 1901 was approximately £15,000 (£1 in 1901 equalled £130 today).
Sir Charles Tennant (1823–1906) was the eldest grandson of Charles Tennant (1768– 1838), initially an Ayshire silk weaver, immortalised by Robert Burns as ‘wabster Charlie’. The grandfather’s money spinner was bleach powder, which replaced human urine, for which he received the patent. At his death, he owned the largest chemical business in the world, one of the components of the future ICI.
Sir Charles—connoisseur, businessman, Liberal Mp—established a country seat, The Glen in Peebleshire, and gained a permanent entry in Debrett’s as 1st Baronet. His daughter Margot (1864–1945) was the second wife of Prime Minister Asquith. A younger daughter, the Conservative Politician Baroness (‘K’) Elliot of Harwood (1903–94), could say in the 1990s that her grandfather danced the night away at the 1815 Waterloo Ball.