ATTRIBUTED TO BALTHASAR GERBIER (AND GEORGE KNAPTON) | Portrait of George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham (1592-1628)

Acquired by Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon (1609-74), for his gallery at Clarendon House, London;

By descent to his son, Henry Hyde, 2nd Earl of Clarendon (1638-1709), at Cornbury Park, Oxfordshire; 

Purchased by his brother, Laurence Hyde, 1st Earl of Rochester (1642-1711), together with Cornbury Park and all its contents, in 1697;

By descent at Cornbury, and later The Grove, Hertfordshire, to his son, Henry Hyde, 2nd Earl of Rochester and later 4th Earl of Clarendon (1672-1753);

By transfer to his son, Henry, Viscount Cornbury (1710-53) in 1749, who died without issue;

By inheritance to his niece, Lady Charlotte Capel (1721-90), who married Thomas Villiers, 1st Earl of Clarendon of the second creation (1709-86), and transferred to The Grove, Hertfordshire;

Thence by direct descent to the present owner.

Clarendon State Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford, Bodleian MS Clarendon 92, ff. 253-54, no. 49 and 32; 

Sir W. Musgrave, List of Portraits, BM Add. MS 6391, f. 77, no. 28 (hanging at The Grove in 1764);

G.P. Harding, List of Portraits, Pictures in Various Mansions in the United Kingdom, London 1804, vol. II, p. 210;

Lady T. Lewis, Lives of the Friends and Contemporaries of Lord Chancellor Clarendon, London 1852, vol. III, pp. 254, and 294-95;

G.F. Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain, London 1854, vol. II, p. 456;

P. Toynbee, ‘Horace Walpole's journals of visits to country seats, &c', in The Walpole Society, vol. XVI, Oxford 1927, p. 38 (listed at The Grove in 1761);

C.R. Cammell, The Great Duke of Buckingham, London 1939, p. 80;

R.J.B. Walker, Catalogue of Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture and Engraving in the Palace of Westminster, London 1960, vol. II, pp. 10-11;

D. Piper, Catalogue of Seventeenth-Century Portraits in the National Portrait Gallery, London 1963, p. 41;

O. Ter Kuile, 'Daniel Mytens, 'His Majesties Picture-Drawer'', in Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, vol. XX, 1969, pp. 50-53;

R. Gibson, Catalogue of the Portraits in the collection of the Earl of Clarendon, privately published 1977, no. 15.

On long term loan to the Palace of Westminster until 2019. 

Buckingham was born into the minor gentry, the son of Sir George Villiers of Brooksby and his wife Mary Beaumont, later Duchess of Buckingham. His father died when he was young and his mother educated him for a courtier’s life, sending him to France with John Eliot, the result being that he could dance and fence well, spoke French and was described by Geoffrey Goodman, Bishop of Gloucester as 'the handsomest-bodied man in all of England; his limbs so well compacted, and his conversation so pleasing, and of so sweet a disposition.' Despite his relatively lowly birth, Buckingham rose rapidly through the ranks at the Court of St. James to become King James I’s favourite, being appointed Gentleman of the Bedchamber in 1615; Master of the Horse and a Knight of the Garter in 1616; Lord High Admiral of England; and successively made Earl, the Marquess and finally, in 1623, Duke of Buckingham. So close was their friendship that the King commented to an assembly of the Privy Council in 1617: 'Christ had his John and I have my George.'

As the King’s constant companion and closest advisor, Buckingham enjoyed control over all royal patronage and consequently became one of the most powerful and influential figures in the kingdom during the early 17th century. He further cemented his power by using his influence over royal patronage to prodigiously enrich and advance the social positions of his relatives and close friends. Buckingham's hubris would result in his increasing unpopularity, however, and, following two failed attempts by Parliament to impeach him, led ultimately to his assassination in 1628. 

In 1623, as Lord Admiral and effective Foreign Minister, Buckingham accompanied Prince Charles, later King Charles I, to Madrid in an attempt to negotiate a marriage alliance between the Prince and the Infanta Maria, sister of Philip IV of Spain. Despite the fact that the negotiations collapsed, in large part due to Buckingham’s conduct, the trip forged a strong bond between the young Prince and his father’s favourite courtier, and Charles came to rely heavily on Buckingham's advice and support. It was also on this trip that both Buckingham and Prince Charles encountered first-hand the great collection of paintings belonging to the King of Spain, which was to so dramatically inspire both men’s own patronage of the arts.

Together with Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, the Herbert brothers, respectively 3rd and 4th Earls of Pembroke, and the Duke of Hamilton, as well as the King himself, Buckingham was one of the leading members of the Whitehall Group, that group of connoisseurs surrounding the King, whose activities created what has been described as 'the most spectacular but short-lived episode in British connoisseurship.' With a particular admiration for Caravaggesque painters, as well as the Venetian and Bolognese Schools, an inventory of the Duke’s collection in 1635 listed twenty-two Titians, twenty-one Bassanos (Jacopo and Francesco), seventeen Tintorettos, sixteen Veroneses, sixteen Fettis, ten Palmas, three Bonifazios, two Correggios and one Giorgione. Buckingham was also a major patron of Rubens, whom he met in Paris in 1625 and was largely responsible for persuading the artist to come to England. Rubens painted a number of works for Buckingham and his period in England, though brief, produced some of the greatest works of art created in Britain in the 17th century.

Balthasar Gerbier, who most likely painted this portrait, accompanied Buckingham and Prince Charles on their quixotic embassy to Madrid and it was he who took the Duke and the young Prince to see the picture collections of the Spanish royal family and nobility, which first awakened an appreciation in both men for what could be achieved by art. Many years later, Gerbier summed up Buckingham’s career as a collector by stating: ‘Sometime when I am contemplating the treasures of rarities which your Excellency has in so short a time amassed, I cannot but feel astonishment in the midst of my joy. For out of all the amateurs and Princes and Kings, there is not one who has collected in forty years as many pictures as your Excellency has in five.’¹

This painting was originally conceived as a half-length portrait, but was extended to a full-length by George Knapton in the 18th century to fit with the decorative scheme at The Grove, in Hertfordshire, the seat of Thomas Villiers, 1st Earl of Clarendon, of the second creation, and his wife Lady Charlotte Capel, a descendant of the original Earl of Clarendon. 

1 L. R. Betcherman, ‘The York House Collection and its Keeper’, in Apollo, October 1970, pp. 250-59.