MARK OF JOHN WAKELIN AND WILLIAM TAYLOR, LONDON, 1777

WILLIAM, 2ND VISCOUNT LOWTHER
Lord Lonsdale was a great sportsman and patron of the arts. He married Augusta (d.1838), daughter of 9th Earl of Westmorland, in 1781. He inherited vast estates in Northern England, collecting an annual income of £45,000 before his twenty-first birthday, which continued to grow throughout his life with further investment in coalmining in Cumbria. Such wealth led the Duke of Newcastle to describe the earl as 'perhaps the richest subject that His Majesty has'. Having inherited the main family seat, Lowther Castle, in 1802 Lonsdale employed Robert Smirke (1781-1867), later the architect of the British Museum, to rebuild the castle in a Perpendicular Revival style from 1806 to 1811. The massive building was a true demonstration of the grandest Regency style. The dining room, said to have been forty-five by twenty-five foot, would have been adorned by this magnificent pair of tureens, together with newly commissioned plate from Paul Storr.

A contemporary and personal picture of the Earl is provided by his architect Smirke who wrote of the Earl in the Farington Diary on 19 May 1808, ‘His Lordship rises at 7 o'clock in the winter and earlier in the Summer... and does a vast amount of business. His private amusement is hunting, and he keeps about 50 Hunters... He has very good spirits, and enjoys conversation, anecdotes &c., and tells pleasant stories himself. His income is supposed to be from £80,000 to £100,000 a year, but he has vast expenses.'

Lonsdale's political tenacity was often an alienating force; Horace Walpole described him as 'equally unamiable in public and private.' He was capable of pleasantries, however, and it was observed by Scottish intellectual James Boswell (1740-1795) that 'when he chooses to pay a compliment nobody can do it more gracefully.' H. Owen, The Lowther family: eight hundred years of 'A family of ancient gentry and worship', Bognor Regis, 1990, p. 283 and 297 and Horace Walpole's Memoirs of the reign of King George the Third, G. F. R. Barker ed., London, 1894, vol. 3.

The family's fortune declined due to the extravagance of the 5th Earl who inherited in 1888. He was forced to close up the castle in 1937. The contents were sold at Christie’s by his brother the 6th Earl in a series of sales in 1947. Extensive damage to the castle caused by troops during World War II led the trustees to strip the roof from the castle to save paying punitive taxes. The Castle's shell has since been restored by the Lowther Estate Trust which has created an award winning museum and a series of magnificent gardens.

THE TUREEN DESIGN
The overall inspiration for the design of this tureen is decidedly French, however, the modelling of the figural group on the cover of a putto playing a lyre whilst seated astride a lion, may be attributed to the celebrated English sculptor John Flaxman (1755-1826). It is based on an antique cameo from the Maffei Collection illustrated in Bernard de Montfaucon's L'Antiquité Expliquée, Paris, 1719, book III, p. 183, pl. CXV, fig. 2. This publication was a source for a number of Flaxman's models. A similar figural group of a putto and a panther, also thought to be designed by Flaxman, appears on a tureen by Paul Storr of 1813, which was sold Christie's, New York, 16-17 April 1985, lot 498.