After Joseph Nollekens

Charles Kinnaird, 8th Lord Kinnaird (1780–1826);
thence by family descent to the present owners

This finely sculpted marble bust is carved after the portrait of Francis Russell, 5th Duke of Bedford by Joseph Nollekens (1737-1823). The prime version was formerly at Holland House, Kensington. Other versions include a bust at Woburn Abbey, as well as examples without drapery (such as the present bust; see Roscoe, op. cit., p. 907). The 5th Duke of Bedford was a Whig who strongly supported Charles James Fox, whose portrait by Nollekens he commissioned in 1802 (and which is still at Woburn; see lot 240). The present bust was almost certainly acquired by fellow Whig, Charles Kinnaird, 8th Lord Kinnaird, who was an important art collector and whig politician. He was highly educated, having studied at Eton, and the universities of Edinburgh, Cambridge, Glasgow and Geneva. According to Millar, 'From that time until the death of his father in 1805 he voted consistently with the Foxite whigs, and rendered valuable aid to the party in the repeated attacks made upon the Addington ministry' (op. cit.). Kinnaird was an Italophile, who was in Venice in 1805 when he learned of his father's death. He was a prolific art collector who assembled one of the great Scottish collections of antique statuary and pictures. Many of his paintings, which included works by Rubens, Titian and Poussin, had come from the collection of Philippe Égalité, duc d'Orléans.

RELATED LITERATURE
Millar, A., & Matthew, H.  Kinnaird, Charles, eighth Lord Kinnaird of Inchture (1780–1826), politician and art collector. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved 14 Jun. 2022, from https://www-oxforddnb-com.lonlib.idm.oclc.org/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-15632; I. Roscoe, E. Hardy and M. G. Sullivan, A Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors in Britain, 1660-1851, London, 2009, p. 907, no. 244