Lot 2157
WILLIAM HOARE OF BATH, RA (c.1707-1792)
PORTRAIT OF THOMAS PELHAM-HOLLES, 1st DUKE OF NEWCASTLE UNDER LYNE (1693-1768)
Seated, three quarter length, wearing Garter robes, oil on canvas
120.5 x 95cm.
*The sitter was the eldest son of Thomas Pelham, 1st Baron Pelham, and Lady Grace Holles. He studied at Westminster and at Cambridge before inheriting vast estates upon the death of his uncle. The newly ennobled young man adopted the name Holles and became a Whig politician with forthright and strident views. He was appointed Lord Chamberlain at the age of just 23 and rose to Prime Minister in 1754, succeeding his younger brother, Henry (d.1754), to the position. He served two terms (1754-1756, 1757-1762) and then served in Opposition for a time but became frail after a stroke in 1767. He died in 1768 and, as he and his wife Lady Harriet (nee Godolphin) had no issue, the title passed to his nephew, the 9th Earl of Lincoln from whom Newcastle became latterly estranged. Horace Walpole was brisk in his assessment of Newcastle: "A borrowed importance and real insignificance gave him the perpetual air of a solicitor... He had no pride, though infinite self-love. He loved business immoderately; yet was only always doing it, never did it. When left to himself, he always plunged into difficulties, and then shuddered for the consequences."
Another version of this portrait is in the Government Art Collection, Westminster. The subject was engraved in mezzotint by James MacArdell.
