AFTER SIR ANTHONY VAN DYCK | Portrait of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle (1592-1676)

Commissioned 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 14;

G.P. Harding, List of Portraits, Pictures in Various Mansions in the United Kingdom, London 1804, vol. II, p. 211;

T. Lewis, Lives of the Friends and Contemporaries of Lord Chancellor Clarendon, London 1852, vol. III, pp. 251, 255, and 324-26;

G.F. Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain, London 1854, vol. II, p. 457;

R.W. Goulding and C.K. Adams, Pictures belonging to the Duke of Portland, London 1936, pp. 34-35 and 485;

R.J.B. Walker, Catalogue of Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture and Engraving in the Palace of Westminster, London 1960, vol. II, pp. 78-79;

R. Gibson, Catalogue of the portraits in the collection of the Earl of Clarendon, privately published 1977, no. 106;

O. Millar et al., Van Dyck, A Complete Catalogue of his Paintings, New Haven and London 2004, p. 561 (as an early copy).  

Described by Clarendon as 'a very fine Gentleman' and by Sir Philip Warwick (1609-83), in his Memoirs of the reign of Charles I, as being 'of grandeur, generosity, loyalty and steddy and forward courage', William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle was the son of Sir Charles Cavendish and his wife Catherine Ogle. He was also the grandson of the great Bess of Hardwick and her second husband, Sir William Cavendish, who together began the construction of Chatsworth House in 1552.

Devoted to King and Queen, whom he entertained lavishly at both Welbeck and Bolsover Castle (spending the enormous sum of £15,000 on one occasion in 1634), in 1638 he was appointed Governor to the Prince of Wales and in 1639 a member of the Privy Council. An expert in horsemanship (and a renowned horse breeder) and in the use of arms, during the Civil War he commanded royal armies in the North, financing much of the war effort himself (which he later claimed totalled over £1 million in personal costs), until his defeat at Marston Moor - a battle fought against his advice - after which he went into exile on the Continent.

Newcastle was a great patron of the arts, particularly literature, music and, especially, architecture. He carried out notable building work at both Bolsover and Welbeck; was one of the main patrons of Ben Jonson, among other playwrights and authors; and was at the centre of the intellectual group know as the Welbeck Circle (or Welbeck Academy). He was also fond of painting, and was on friendly terms with Van Dyck, of whose paintings he owned several.

For part of his exile on the Continent, Newcastle lived in Antwerp at the Rubenshuis, which he rented from Rubens’ widow Hélène Fourment from 1648, where he established his famous riding school, and published his famous treatise on the art of horsemanship, Invention Nouvelle de Dresser les Chevaux, in 1658. Newcastle’s wife, Margaret (1623-73), with whom he lived in Antwerp during his years in exile, was an author and the first woman in the history of literature to have her work published during her lifetime and under her own name. Following the Restoration, the Newcastles returned to England, where the Duke largely retired from public life and occupied himself on his estates and in his favourite pursuits of training horses and patronising literature and the arts. 

The present work is a copy of the painting by Van Dyck at Welbeck Abbey.¹

1 See Millar 2004, no. IV, cat. no. 168, reproduced.