Details
William Bell Scott (1811-1890)
Portrait of Spencer Boyd, 14th Laird, full length in shooting Suit holding his double barrelled hammer Twelve Bore
oil on canvas
27 x 19in. (68.6 x 48.2cm)
The last made descendent of the Boyds of Penkill and Trochrig, Spencer Boyd inheritated the Penkill estate when his father died of consumption in 1826. Spencer and his younger sister Alice were then in their infancy and they were brought up by their mother's family, the Loshes, Newcastle industrialists with strong literary and artistic interests. These re-emerged in the children Spencer becoming a talented carver and devoting himself to the rebuilding of Penkill, which he inherited as a ruin. With the encouragment and financial backing of William Losh, his grandfather, he set to work in the 1850's using Alexander George Thomson of Glasgow as his architect. He moved in, and began furnishing the place with old oak and tapestries, in 1858. A year later Alice met Bell Scott, who visited Penkill for the first time in July 1860.
The portrait shows Spencer standing in the glen at Penkill with the Penwhapple Burn behind him. It must date from the early 1860's and be roughly contemporary with Scott's painting of Spencer and Alice standing on the castle battlements (lot No. 170), in which Spencer wears the same costume and is evidently about the same age. Unfortunately the idyllic life these portraits represent was not to last. Spencer's father and grandfather had both died young, and in February 1865 he succumbed to heart failure while he and his sister were staying with the Scotts in London, for Scott's dramatic account, see his Autobiographical Notes, 1892, II, pp 76-8
Portrait of Spencer Boyd, 14th Laird, full length in shooting Suit holding his double barrelled hammer Twelve Bore
oil on canvas
27 x 19in. (68.6 x 48.2cm)
The last made descendent of the Boyds of Penkill and Trochrig, Spencer Boyd inheritated the Penkill estate when his father died of consumption in 1826. Spencer and his younger sister Alice were then in their infancy and they were brought up by their mother's family, the Loshes, Newcastle industrialists with strong literary and artistic interests. These re-emerged in the children Spencer becoming a talented carver and devoting himself to the rebuilding of Penkill, which he inherited as a ruin. With the encouragment and financial backing of William Losh, his grandfather, he set to work in the 1850's using Alexander George Thomson of Glasgow as his architect. He moved in, and began furnishing the place with old oak and tapestries, in 1858. A year later Alice met Bell Scott, who visited Penkill for the first time in July 1860.
The portrait shows Spencer standing in the glen at Penkill with the Penwhapple Burn behind him. It must date from the early 1860's and be roughly contemporary with Scott's painting of Spencer and Alice standing on the castle battlements (lot No. 170), in which Spencer wears the same costume and is evidently about the same age. Unfortunately the idyllic life these portraits represent was not to last. Spencer's father and grandfather had both died young, and in February 1865 he succumbed to heart failure while he and his sister were staying with the Scotts in London, for Scott's dramatic account, see his Autobiographical Notes, 1892, II, pp 76-8