Circle of Sir Godfrey Kneller

By descent from the sitter to Anthony Gerard Edward Noel, 5th Earl of Gainsborough (1923–2009);

By inheritance to his third son.

This portrait depicts Baptist Noel, 4th Earl of Gainsborough (1708–1751), one of the most significant Earls of Gainsborough during the eighteenth century. After his education at Eton and St John's College Cambridge, his formal responsibilities included Warden & Chief Ranger of Lyfield Forest, Rutland, and High Steward of Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire, the ancestral manor the Noel family inherited through marriage in 1629. In 1728 the Earl married Elizabeth Chapman (1707–1771), the daughter of his gamekeeper, a match which would have been considered atypical for an aristocrat of the eighteenth century.

Alongside his eccentricities, the Earl was a noted patron of the arts. Most famously, Baptist hosted a visit from the famous composer George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) at Exton Hall, Rutland, in 1745. In 1748 a special performance of Handel's Comus was staged in the grounds of Exton.¹ It appears that Gainsborough performed in this production, alongside other family members in what was perceived as an imitation of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens in London. Records also show that busts of Handel, Isaac Newton and Alexander Pope were commissioned from the sculptor Louis-François Roubiliac (1702–1762) during this period. On the Earl's death in 1751, his chaplain John Skynner remarked in his funeral sermon:

'His skill in musick, painting and poetry; his knowledge in the principal arts and embellishments of elegant life... rendered him at all times capable of furnishing out a refined entertainment both for himself, and others, of the same improved and cultivated taste.'²

The Earl also commissioned a set of full-length posthumous portraits of his ancestors by J. Henesy also included in this sale (see lot 87).

¹ C. Timms, 'Lord Gainsborough buys a bust of Handel from Roubiliac', in Händel-Jahrbuch, vol. 67, 2021, pp. 59–67.

² J. Skynner, A Sermon Preached at the Funeral of Baptist Earl of Gainsborough 1751, London 1751, pp. 11–12.