Lot 1908
SIR WILLIAM BEECHEY (1753-1839)
PORTRAIT OF CHARLES SMALL PYBUS (1766-1810)
Quarter length, wearing a dark coat and white stock, signed with initials and dated 1803, bears contemporary inscription Charles Small Pybus Esqr./ painted by/ Sir William Beechey/ 1803 verso, oil on panel
73 x 60.5cm.
* The sitter was born in the East Indies, the second son of a banker. He was educated at Harrow and at St. John's College, Cambridge. Pybus initially pursued a career in the law, having been called to the bar in 1789 and he then impressed William Pitt the Younger as an orator soon after becoming MP for Dover in the same year. He rose to become Lord of the Admiralty (1791), then Lord of the Treasury in 1797 and he held his seat until 1802. Pybus died, unmarried, in 1810. He had a reputation for pomposity and Beechey was not charmed by his sitter: `He was very vain of His knowledge of pictures, but in reality knew nothing abt. them.` (The Diary of Joseph Farington, XI, New Haven and London, 1983, p.3882). Nonetheless, Beechey painted him at least once more, apparently in later life (Dulwich Picture Gallery). That portrait has been dated to the 1790s but is more probably c.1810
Provenance: Acquired by the vendor's father c.1975
