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Lot Essay
Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, was born in 1769, and succeeded as 2nd Marquess of Londonderry in 1821. He became Foreign Secretary in 1812, when the power of the French empire under Napoleon extended through its allied states from Madrid to Warsaw. During the next three years Castlereagh strove to build and maintain alliances that would defeat Napoleon. It was a labour that demanded a clear vision, enormous energy and direct personal negotiation on mainland Europe. Even as the military tide turned heavily against Napoleon in the autumn of 1813, the diplomatic war still to be won, Castlereagh sought an alliance that was not ‘to terminate with the war’, but to remain as a deterrent to ‘an attack by France on the European dominions of any one of the contracting parties’.
He has been given the major credit for the Treaty of Chaumont in March 1814, which bound Austria, Prussia, Russia and the United Kingdom to overthrow Napoleon and remain in alliance for 20 years. He represented Britain in the negotiations for the Treaties of Paris of May 1814 and November 1815, the Treaty of Vienna of June 1815, and the Quadruple Alliance of November 1815. In the Alliance the four allied powers agreed to meet periodically ‘for the purpose of consulting upon their common interest and for the consideration of the measures most salutary for the maintenance of the peace of Europe’. Lord Ripon, who accompanied Castlereagh to the Continent in 1813, described the gifts of the great diplomat: ‘the suavity and dignity of his manners, his habitual patience and self-command, his considerate tolerance of difference of opinion in others, all fitted him for such a task; whilst his firmness, when he knew he was right, in no degree detracted from the influence of his conciliatory demeanour.’ A version of this painting in situ, at Londonderry House, is illustrated on page 193 in this catalogue and a smaller version is included in the sale lot 413.
The prime of this portrait was painted by Lawrence in 1821 and remains in the Londonderry collection (K. Garlick, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Oxford, 1989, p. 229, no. 507d.)
He has been given the major credit for the Treaty of Chaumont in March 1814, which bound Austria, Prussia, Russia and the United Kingdom to overthrow Napoleon and remain in alliance for 20 years. He represented Britain in the negotiations for the Treaties of Paris of May 1814 and November 1815, the Treaty of Vienna of June 1815, and the Quadruple Alliance of November 1815. In the Alliance the four allied powers agreed to meet periodically ‘for the purpose of consulting upon their common interest and for the consideration of the measures most salutary for the maintenance of the peace of Europe’. Lord Ripon, who accompanied Castlereagh to the Continent in 1813, described the gifts of the great diplomat: ‘the suavity and dignity of his manners, his habitual patience and self-command, his considerate tolerance of difference of opinion in others, all fitted him for such a task; whilst his firmness, when he knew he was right, in no degree detracted from the influence of his conciliatory demeanour.’ A version of this painting in situ, at Londonderry House, is illustrated on page 193 in this catalogue and a smaller version is included in the sale lot 413.
The prime of this portrait was painted by Lawrence in 1821 and remains in the Londonderry collection (K. Garlick, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Oxford, 1989, p. 229, no. 507d.)