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FOLLOWING THE GRAND TOUR: THE CHENEYS OF BADGER HALL 'Mr Cheney of Badger' is a whimsical-seeming name that might have appealed to A.A. Milne or Kenneth Grahame, but to students of the English watercolour school, or of the history of British art collecting, it is well, if hazily, respected. It appears as a footnote, and occasionally slightly more, in the biographies of several good artists during the first half of the 19th Century to whom a Mr Cheney was a generous patron. Furthermore, Cheney is an admirable provenance, especially on a Tiepolo drawing. In fact, there were two relevant Mr Cheneys of Badger Hall, Shropshire, during this period, the brothers Robert Henry and Edward. This collection of watercolours and drawings largely by them, their mother and sister, provides an admirable opportunity to learn about them and their artistic relatives, as well as the wider art world of their time and the connections between England and Italy in the post-Napoleonic years, the caesura, as it were, between the Grand Tours of the Milordi and the arrival of Cook's tourists. Between 1779 and 1783, Badger Hall (fig. 3, see lot 55), an old house between Shifnal and Bridgnorth in Shropshire, was largely remodelled by James Wyatt as a Greek Revival seat for Isaac Hawkins Browne, the younger (1745-1818). Browne's father had been a noted wit, drinking man and poet - despite which, according to Johnson, 'he got into parliament and never opened his mouth' for the best part of thirty years - but the family fortune came from unpoetic iron and coal. The son was MP for Bridgnorth from 1784 to 1812 and was also no orator. However, he seems to have been more sober and serious minded than his father, and the austere architectural style would have suited him. The house itself was demolished in 1952. Wyatt had also proposed a Tower of the Winds in the grounds, which was not built, but he had erected a Greek temple, which survives in Badger Dingle (see lot 111). The Brownes had moved westwards to Badger from Burton-on-Trent, and the Cheneys, to whom Isaac the younger sold the hall, were also migrants, from Derby and Yoxhall. They were a military family. In 1742 Robert Cheney had been wounded at Dettingen, and his son, also Robert, who was the first Cheney of Badger, was ADC to the Duke of York and rose to the rank of Lieutenant-General. He was probably born in 1766, since he was 54 when he died in 1820, and in 1799 he married Harriet Carr (1771-1848) (fig. 4, see lot 42), the first of the artists represented in this sale. She was a daughter of Ralph Carr of Dunston Hill (lot 43, see illustration f), a house now lost in the outskirts of Gateshead. Harriet had at least one sister and two brothers, John, born in 1764, who inherited Dunston Hill and served as a JP, and Ralph, born four years later, who became a barrister in London. Their portraits, together with their wives and children, are included in this sale (see lot 43). There were five children of the Cheney marriage, three sons followed by two daughters, and like their mother, two of them were enthusiastic and talented amateur artists. The eldest was Robert Henry (1801-1866) (fig. 5), generally known as Henry, who succeeded his father at Badger, and, dying unmarried in 1866, was in turn succeeded by Edward (1803-1884) (fig. 6 and fig. 7, see lot 44), the best known of the family and also a bachelor. The third, Ralph was a professional soldier, serving in the 71st Regiment, and is not represented as an artist in this collection. Neither is the elder sister Frederica, who married Capel Cure in 1822 and provided heirs to Badger in the next generation, The youngest of the family was Harriet Margaret (1811-1852) (fig. 8, see lot 44) who married Robert Pigot in 1842. By a gentle irony, one of her mother's portraits in the sale is of Anna Clinton, Pigot's second wife (see lot 45). Before her marriage, Harriet Carr had had lessons in watercolour from John 'Warwick' Smith (1749-1831), whose stay in Italy from 1776 to 1781, courtesy of his patron the Earl of Warwick, was the most formative experience of his career. Harriet first followed him there in 1792, travelling with her elder brother John, and although her forte was painting portraits of her friends, rather than landscape, to some extent she will have viewed Italy through Smith's eyes. On her return to England she executed landscapes as well as portraits (see lot 114). Thereafter, because of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, there were few opportunities for Grand Tourism, and this enforced twenty-five year isolation from Continental influences was a fundamental reason for the remarkable development of the English watercolour school. The wars not only helped create the professionals, but also contributed to the fashion for watercolour among amateurs, since, from 1768 when Paul Sandby was appointed drawing master at the Woolwich Academy, the art had been taught to future officers in the army and navy. Many of them passed the enthusiasm back to their families. In turn, when one family had employed a congenial drawing master, he could build up a profitable practice among their neighbours and relations. Peter de Wint (1784-1849) was a Staffordshire man, and it was natural that many of his most important patrons, with whom he would stay during the summer months, were from the Midland counties. In Staffordshire and Shropshire the most important of them included the Powis family, with seats at Powis Castle, Welshpool, Lydbury North in Shropshire and Market Drayton in Staffordshire, the Clives of Oakley Park, Ludlow and the Cheneys of Badger. He was the most successful watercolour teacher of his time, and his influence is clear in the work of Henry (see lots 101-107), although not in Edward's, who preferred to draw pen and ink landscapes in the manner of Antonio Senapé (1788-1850). Rather later, members of the family would appear to have taken further lessons from Henry Bright and, probably in Rome, William Leighton Leitch (1804-1883) (see lot 16). Other British artists whom they knew to a greater or lesser extent in Rome included Thomas Hartley Cromek (1809-1873) (lots 14, 40, 67, 89, 96, 110 and 115), Edward Lear, and probably Thomas Uwins and Penry Williams. Edward Cheney's tastes were at least as much literary as artistic, and he was more an art collector than an artist, although probably he would not have made much distinction between the various categories. He had a brief flirtation with the army, passing through Sandhurst and being gazetted ensign in 1820. He served for a short time in India, but soon went on half-pay. He was made up to Captain in 1827. In 1825, he followed Henry and their mother to Italy. They had visited Naples in 1823, and then settled in Rome, in the Palazzo Sciarra on the Corso. Edward too began his sojourn by spending some time in Naples, where he became friendly with the antiquary, archaeologist and author Sir William Gell (1778-1836) (see lot 91) and the Hon. Keppel Craven, in self-exile there since the scandalous trial of their old employer Queen Caroline. 'Gentle, kind-hearted and good-tempered', according to his friend Lady Blessington, Gell was the indispensable first port of call for all cultured British visitors to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. He lived there in 'his eggshell of a house and pretty garden, which he planted himself ten years ago, and calls it the Boschetto Gellio' (fig. 9, see lot 91). (Charles Greville, Diaries, 24 May, 1830). Harriet and John Carr had been among the last of the Grand Tourists in the 18th Century manner. Such tours were very much the culmination of a well-born young Englishman's education, intended to give him a veneer of culture, which it often did, even if many seized the opportunity to educate themselves in quite different ways. The grandest tourists, such as William Beckford, would take their own artist to record their progress around the greatest sites and scenes. It is strange to think of the artist John Robert Cozens (1752-1797) as the equivalent to a holiday camera. As well as pictures of the tour, they would expect to return with casts of classical sculpture - more often contemporary copies, recognised as such, than Roman originals - and Old Master paintings, which in many cases they may not have realised might be as contemporary as the casts. A couple of years ago in Seville, there was a fascinating exhibition of the cargo captured on the British ship Westmoreland. It was made up of souvenirs being sent home by some very grand tourists indeed, but had been seized and remained intact in Spain. Virtually everything was 18th Century. After the Napoleonic Wars, when the next generation of the family went to Italy, the emphasis was different. Not only did many British visitors stay for much longer periods, but they were more interested in genuine antiquities and true Old Masters. The activities of such antiquaries and archaeologists as Sir William Hamilton (1730-1803), Sir William Gell and the Duchess of Sermoneta (see lot 34) had altered perceptions. While Hamilton and Gell encouraged the excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum, which had begun in the 1770s and 1780s, the Duchess was one of the first to investigate the Etruscans. Her husband's family, the Caetani, are perhaps the oldest Roman nobles, with the dukedom a late addition going back only to Lucrezia Borgia, and there were many Etruscan sites on their extensive estates. She began to excavate in the 1830s. Her son, Senator Michelangelo, the 13th Duke, was an artist and a friend of the Cheneys. Edward was in Genoa in 1827, and there he first met a life-long friend, Henry Edward Fox (fig. 10, see lot 44), later the 4th Lord Holland (d.1859), whose Journal covering the years 1827 to 1830 also has a number of references to him. (See The Journal of Henry Edward Fox, 1923 (ed.), The Earl of Ilchester). Charles Greville, first encountered Henry Cheney on 29 March, 1830. He writes: 'Went to Moriers (see lot 45) last night and found Mr Cheney with whom I got directly acquainted and settled to dine with him at the villa which he and Fox have at Frascati'. This was the Villa Muti (fig. 11, see lots 37 and 38), which had been the summer residence of the Cardinal Duke of York, Bishop of Frascati, otherwise Henry IX and I, last of the Royal Stuarts, who had died there in 1807. Greville continues: '1 April. I went with Cheney and George Hamilton to Frascati, at dinner we had Hortense the ex-Queen of Holland (see lot 44) and her son Prince Louis Napoleon (later Emperor Napoleon III). Hortense is not near so ugly as I expected, very unaffected and gay and gives herself no royal airs. She is called Madame.' Henry must have returned to England from time to time to see to the running of Badger, as later in 1830, the artist Thomas Hartley Cromek arrived in Rome with a letter of introduction from him to Edward, Henry returning shortly afterwards. On a further introduction from the Cheneys, Cromek went on to Naples where Gell opened many doors for him. Probably early in 1831, Edward visited Goethe at Weimar 'finding him', as he told Sir Walter Scott in May 1832, 'well, though very old, in perfect possession of all his facilities'. Scott had also hoped to visit the German sage, but both poets were dead before the end of that year. Scott's Mediterranean tour had brought him to Naples from Malta, and then on to Rome, where Gell performed the introduction. This was all the more welcome to both parties, since the Cheneys 'had long been on terms of very strict intimacy with the Maclean Clephanes of Torloisk' (see lots 44 and 45), so that Sir Walter was ready to regard Edward 'at first sight as a friend. Nor was it a small circumstance that the Cheney family had then in their occupancy the Villa Muti at Frascati (see lots 37 and 38), for many of his later years the favourite abode of the Cardinal York'. J.P.Lockhart, Life of Scott, 1832, chapter 17. Despite his best efforts in Roman society, Scott's increasing infirmity was obvious, 'and indeed the only, or almost the only, very lively curiosity he appeared to feel' regarded the family pictures and other Stuart relics then preserved at the Villa Muti (see lots 37 and 38). Excepting his visits at Frascati, the only excursion he made was to the grand old castle of Bracciano (see lot 88), where he spent a night in the feudal halls of the Orsini, now included among the numberless possessions of the banker Prince Torlonia (see lot 70).' The records of Cromek's Continental travels provided several more glimpses of the Cheneys. By the spring or early summer of 1834, Edward was in Venice, where Cromek visited galleries and copied paintings with him before going to Greece in July. Cromek spent a further month with him there in 1835, and in that year Edward bought both of the artists' Royal Academy exhibits, an Athenian and a Venetian subject. Edward was also the conduit for the disappointing news in 1839 that Cromek had failed to be elected to the 'Old' Watercolour Society. In 1843, it was once again through a letter of introduction from Henry that Cromek met de Wint, who looked at his portfolio of sketches and pronounced 'most of them very fine.' Robert also visited Venice several times. On the evidence of dated drawings in the collection, he was there in 1833, 1837 and 1838. He also travelled through France (see lots 92-95 and 98-100), paid at least one visit to Vienna (see lot 97), and in 1837 he toured southern Ireland (see lots 101-109, 111-113 and 117-119). He painted the houses and parks of friends in England (see lots 120-124), although few if any of his English drawings are dated. By the 1840s, Edward was living in the Ca' Soranzo-Piovene on the Grand Canal, and had struck up a friendship with Rawdon Brown (1803-1883), described by George Knox in a paper on Cheney's collecting activities as 'the great archivist and the most celebrated Englishman in 19th Century Venice'. A further firm friend was Richard Monkton Milnes (1809-1885), first Lord Houghton, the politician, man of letters and dilettante, with whom he founded the Philobiblon Society. Almost all of Edward's publications were printed as Miscellanies for that Society, perhaps the only exception being a novel, Malvagna or, The Evil Eye, 1838, described by Charles Sebag-Montefiore in the Dictionary of National Biography as 'a romantic work set in Sicily, but it did not attract public attention.' Edward's friendship with Henry Edward Fox (see lot 44), begun in Italy, continued in England where he was a frequent visitor to Holland House (fig. 12, see lot 108), which had become a centre of London artistic and intellectual life under Fox's father, the 3rd Lord Holland. After his succession in 1840, Fox continued and expanded this tradition, notably in his patronage of George Frederick Watts (1817-1904), whom he met in Italy. A portrait of Edward Cheney by Watts used to hang in Holland House. Not only was Edward a voracious collector of paintings and works of art, and most importantly, perhaps, of Tiepolo drawings and oil sketches, but from 1851, he acted as a consultant to the National Gallery, and in 1853 he was a founder of the Burlington Fine Arts Club. His collection, by then housed at Badger (fig. 3) and in his London house, was sold after his death in a series of sales in 1885. Pictures, bronzes, faïence, furniture, objects of art, coins and medals were dispersed at Christie's between 29 April and 6 May, while on the same days, Sotheby's offered his prints, including a good groups of Rembrandt etchings, and library. By a series of oversights the latter sales included a painting that was much later identified as a scene from 'The Beggar's Opera' by Hogarth. This was odd, because another was listed correctly at Christie's. Among the Old Masters at Christie's (some of whose attributions will have changed since) were: van Dyke's Mrs. Killigrew (£173.5.0); Beccafumi (£136) and Bellini (£57.15.0); works by Canaletto; Guardi's Scuolo di San Marco (£241); School of Raphael (£183.15); Tiepolo's The Finding of Moses (£262.10.0); and Tintoretto's Portrait of Bartholomeo Capello (£231). Also included in the sale was a portrait of Walter Scott by Colvin Smith, supposedly dating from 1816 (£262.10.0.); Scott sat for Smith for the first of about 20 copies and variants of his portrait in 1828. The bronze and metalwork collection was also distinguished and included a group of Pluto and Cerberus by Benvenuto Cellini (£903). Bibliography: Cheney, Edward, Miscellanies of the Philobiblon Society, 1854-1884: Vols. II; VII; XI; XIII; XIV. Christie's: Sale catalogues, 29 April - 5 May, 1885. Dennis, George, Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, London 1848. Greville, Charles , Journal of the Reigns of George IV, William IV, and Queen Victoria, London, 1874-1887. Ilchester, The Earl of (ed.), The Journal of Henry Edward Fox, London, 1923. Knox, George, Edward Cheney. Lockhart, J.P., Life of Scott, London, 1832. Sebag-Montefiore, Charles, Edward Cheney, Dictionary of National Biography: Missing Persons, Oxford, 1993. Sotheby's: Sale catalogues, 29 April - 5 May, 1887. Sumner, Anne, Thomas Hartley Cromek: A Classical Vision, exhibition catalogue, Harewood House, 1999. Waagen, C.F., Galleries and Cabinets of Art in Great Britain, Treasures of Art in Great Britain, Supplement, London, 1857. Huon Mallalieu Author of The Dictionary of British Watercolour Artists up to 1920 and writer for Country Life. All lots are sold framed unless indicated otherwise

Robert Henry Cheney (1801-1866)

The visit of the Emperor of Austria to Venice in 1837, the Grand Canal lined with spectators

Details

Robert Henry Cheney (1801-1866)
The visit of the Emperor of Austria to Venice in 1837, the Grand Canal lined with spectators
inscribed 'Venice' (lower left)
pencil and watercolour with touches of bodycolour
12 x 18¾ in. (30.5 x 47.6 cm.)

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Lot Essay

Venice had been under Austrian rule since 1815 and it was only a decade after this watercolour was executed that the Venetians rebelled and Venice was declared a Republic.

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