Robert Edge Pine

Inventory, 1849, p. 6, in the Knotted Dressing Room;
Catalogue of Portraits, 1920, no. 54;
N. Jeffares, Dictionary of Pastellists before 1800, on-line edition, no. J.593.113

This youthful portrait of Wyndham Knatchbull was taken when he was three. He was the only son of Sir Wyndham Knatchbull, 5^th Bt and his wife Catherine Harris (the sister of Thomas Harris the close friend and correspondent of George Frederick Handel). He grew up in this cultivated world and after studying at Wadham College, Oxford embarked on his Grand Tour. Between 1758 and 1759 he visited Venice, Florence, and Rome and whilst in the latter commissioned one of Batoni's finest full length portraits. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who encountered him in Italy, wrote "one of the most modest, well dispos'd young Men that I have known abroad." On his return he became M.P. for Kent. He also came into the family estates and judging the old house at Hatch to be too inconvenient commissioned Robert Adam the following year to design a replacement in the smartest classical style. Work began immediately but was temporarily halted following his unanticipated death two years later.