Portrait of a gentleman, full-length, in a black coat and hat holding a cane in his right hand, in a draped, colonnaded interior

This picture was part of the celebrated Northwick Park collection, which was first begun by John Rushout, 2nd Lord Northwick (1769-1859). As Tancred Borenius wrote, the 2nd Lord Northwick was ‘a collector of very high intelligence and discrimination ... he was able to avail himself of an ample fortune to buy the finest specimens of the Fine arts which came into the market.’ When he died intestate, the collection was offered for sale at auction and his nephew, the 3rd Lord Northwick, bought back a small but important portion of the collection. In 1912, Captain E.G. Spencer-Churchill inherited Northwick Park and the rump of the collection from his maternal grandmother, the widow of the 3rd Lord Northwick, and over the subsequent 50 years added a further 200 paintings, which he christened the ‘Northwick Rescues’. In his will he stipulated that his collection should be sold in its entirety, which it was, in a long series of sales in these Rooms in 1965 which realized over £2,000,000.