Portrait of Robert Stewart, 2nd Marquess of Londonderry, called Lord Castlereagh (1769-1822), bust-length, wearing the star of the Order of the Garter

A letter written by Thomas Lawrence to his great friend Richard Meade, 3rd Earl of Clanwilliam, in November 1823 begins ‘I cannot satisfactorily explain the cause of your not receiving your picture sooner’ (Fig. 1, unpublished manuscript). However, he goes on to say that this is in fact due to his desire to make sure that any work Clanwilliam received from him be actually by his own hand. He specifies ‘The picture I have now finished for you is one to which I can fully put my name (and although I may seldom do so I will to this) for I have been these three last days chiefly occupied upon it.’ Though obviously satisfied with the result, a still contrite Lawrence further commented, ‘You will find it as like as the original, and I hope in this pleasure of contemplating a face that was never turned to you but with friendly confidence and regard, you will forgive this seeming neglect that has too long deprived you of it.’ (Fig. 2, unpublished manuscript).

The picture under discussion in this missive is the present portrait of Robert Stewart, 2nd Marquess of Londonderry, called Lord Castlereagh. What it touchingly references is the nexus of friendship within which the portrait was commissioned and executed. Lawrence knew Castlereagh well, having first painted him in 1794 (three-quarter-length, Collection of the Marquess of Londonderry), then again in 1810 (bust-length, National Portrait Gallery, London, NPG 891), in 1814 (three-quarter-length, Collection of the Marquess of Londonderry) and finally in 1821 on his ascendancy to the title of the Marquess of Londonderry (full-length, Collection of the Marquess of Londonderry). Clanwilliam had joined the diplomatic service and attended the Congress of Vienna in 1814 attached to Lord Castlereagh’s suite before serving as his private secretary from 1817 to 1819. It was presumably through Castlereagh, Britain’s leading negotiator at the Congress of Vienna, and his half-brother, Charles William Stewart, later 3rd Marquess of Londonderry, that Lawrence met Clanwilliam, whom he went on to paint in 1819 (sold Christie’s, London 6 July 2021, lot 13). Clanwilliam would later serve as a pallbearer at Lawrence’s funeral on 21 January 1830, an occasion of national mourning recorded by Turner in a watercolour preserved at Tate Britain, London.

The painting itself is a version of the portrait exhibited at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1814. When the painting was first exhibited it did not depict Castlereagh wearing the Garter Star, as he was only invested as a Knight of the Garter in June 1814, when the exhibition was already underway. Lawrence added it at a later date, but not in time for it to appear in Charles Turner’s engraving after the portrait. Clanwilliam was not the only person who asked Lawrence to paint a version of the 1814 portrait. In 1817, the future George IV had also commissioned a version of the portrait at a cost of 200 guineas, almost certainly intended for what would become the Waterloo Chamber in Windsor Castle.

A celebration of monarchical power, this impressive project brought together portraits of the principal soldiers, sovereigns and diplomats responsible for the overthrow of Napoleon and the re-establishment of the monarchies and states of Europe, all painted by Lawrence. Its origins date to August 1814, when the Prince of Wales commissioned Lawrence to paint the portraits of the distinguished visitors who had come for the negotiations surrounding the signing of the Treaty of London. The number of works grew steadily as Lawrence travelled to the various congresses following the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.

In his role as Foreign Secretary from 1812, Castlereagh was a key player at all of these events. 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. 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.’ Sadly however, Castlereagh suffered from depression and took his own life in 1822. It would have been the desire to have some memory of his illustrious friend that led Clanwilliam to commission the present portrait in 1823.