The Viscount Dangan Aristocrat

Details

Sir Leslie Matthew Ward 'Spy' (1851-1922)
The Viscount Dangan
Aristocrat
signed 'Spy' (lower left)
pencil, watercolour and bodycolour
12½ x 6½ in. (31.8 x 16.5 cm.)

Provenance

Thomas Gibson Bowles.
Original Drawings for Vanity Fair; Christie's, London, 5 - 8 March 1912, lot 196 (£1 10s. to Charles Davis).
with David Ker Fine Art, London.

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Lot Essay

Henry Arthur Mornington Wellesley, 3rd Earl Dangan and Cowley (1866-1919), Aristocrat, was twenty-three years of age when this drawing was executed by 'Spy'. Little is known of his career after this point, although it is recorded that he married three times and divorced twice. In 1887, he was made a Captain in the 3rd Battalion of the Duke of Edinburgh's Wiltshire Regiment. Viscount Dangan once owned a horse named 'Sir Algernon'. The 1st Earl of Cowley was Ambassador to France (1852-1867).

[He] helped to sign away our rights of naval supremacy at Paris in 1856 [and] has not been enabled by Fortune or other influence to rise above the level of a Militiaman guiltless of military homicide for notwithstanding his antecedents, he has as yet shown no signs of marked diplomatic ability.

Vanity Fair, 'Statesmen', No. 558, 1889

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