THE PROPERTY OF A LADY
English School, circa 1695

Details
English School, circa 1695
Scene in a London Coffee House
bodycolour heightened with gold and gum arabic
5 7/8 x 8 5/8in. (149 x 219mm.)
Provenance
Mrs Gosnall
By descent to Cooper Charles Brooks (her great grandson)
By descent to Winifred Mary Tomlinson (his granddaughter)
Given to Donald Longstaff, 1958

Lot Essay

The provenance derives from a label on the reverse. This drawing is the most elaborately finished of three versions of the composition. The others are a version in bodycolour in the British Museum 5¾ x 8 5/8in., (see L. Stainton and C. White, Drawing in England from Hilliard to Hogarth, exhibition catalogue, London, British Museum, 1987, p.226, no.181, repr.) and in an engraving in reverse (see D. Hartley and M.M. Elliot, Life and Work of the People of England, A Pictorial Record from Contemporary Sources: The Eighteenth Century, 1931, p.75, pl.22c). In the British Museum version the woman on the left is handing a narrow fluted glass to the boy and the pictures are somewhat different: the scene of lovers on the left is set in an interior, the man in armour stands behind the corner of a table and faces the other way, and the landscape has three distinct trees on the right. There are minor variations in the expressions and direction of glance of the figures, in the objects on the table, and in the rather more numerous notices on the back wall which bear more or less legible inscriptions, including one that reads 'Heare is Right Irish Usquebah, that is Irish Whiskey'. In the print the serving woman, on the right, is again shown handing a glass to the boy, in front of whom are two dogs scrapping on the floor. The cauldron over the fire has straight, slightly tapering sides, and between the windows there are hat-racks on which also hangs a mirror. The paintings include the lovers in an interior but the portrait and landscape are replaced by a matching pair of portraits, male and female, in oval frames.

The British Museum drawing bears a fake monogram 'A.S.' with the date '1668'; the print is dated by Hartley and Elliot to c.1740. Stainton and White date the British Museum drawing to c.1695 which seems appropriate for this version also. A clue is given by the form of the coffee pots which appear to be close in their tapering cylindrical forms and plain conical covers to one of the earliest known coffee pots, that by George Garthorne hall-marked 1685 in the Victoria and Albert Museum (see M. Clayton, The Collector's Dictionary of the Silver and Gold of Great Britain and North America, 2nd ed. 1985, p.96, repr. pl.134).

A further clue may be given by the portraits. Unlike contemporary domestic interiors this coffee house is austerely furnished with plain walls, an absence of curtains, and wooden tables and benches. The fireplace and dispensing area are utilitarian rather than decorative. The only decorative elements are the paintings and these seem to have some iconographic significance, particularly the portrait which is receiving special attention from two of the inmates; one raises a candle towards it while the other restrains or admonishes him (in the print this confrontation takes place below the male portrait). The English Coffee House had both a social and a political function. Henri Misson, in his Mémoires et Observations Faites Par un Voyageur en Angleterre, published in the Hague in 1698 and reissued in English in 1719, writes 'These Houses, which are very numerous in London, are extremely convenient. You have all Manner of News there: You have a good fire, which you may sit by as long as you please: You have a Dish of Coffee; you meet your Friends for the Transaction of Business, and all for a Penny, if you do not care to spend more' (quoted in Stainton and White, loc.cit.) - clay pipes were also available as can be seen in J. Houghton, Collection for the Improvement of Husbandry and Trade, 1727 ed., IV, p.132, states that 'I have heard a worthy friend of mine who was of good learning (and had a very good esteem of the universities) say that he did think that coffee-houses had improved useful knowledge as much as the universities have. At that time the universities were the homes of political and religious orthodoxy and it is perhaps for that reason that the London Coffee Houses, the first of which seems to have been established c.1652, during the Commonwealth, were often suspected as hotbeds of sedition, particularly under Charles II and his brother James II. In 1675 a royal proclamation unsuccessfully banned them as places where idle people spread 'divers False, Malitious and Scandalous Reports' and in September 1675 twenty proprietors were summoned for making newspapers available to their visitors. Titus Oates was arrested in a Coffee house on 10 May 1684 (see inter alia, D. Ogg, England in the Reign of Charles II, 1934, 1, pp.100-2). Moreover, different Coffee Houses were known for their allegiance to different political parties. One suspects, therefore, that the portraits in this group of works have a particular political significance. The single male portrait in armour may well be intended to represent the liberating William III, brought in to replace the Catholic James II by the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and suggested by the Whigs. The two portraits in the print could be William and his wife Mary, daughter of James II, through whom in large part the joint rulers inherited their claim to the throne

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