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Description: | The historical portraits collection compromises a group of eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth century portraits of individuals associated with Barings bank.
Many of the portraits were commissioned from leading artists of the day such as Benjamin West, Sir Thomas Lawrence, John Linnell, Ambrose McEvoy and Sir James Gunn. These pictures were largely commissioned privately by the Baring family but later passed into the firmÃ's ownership, mostly between the 1940s and 1960s.
Many of the sitters were partners and directors of the firm but others were sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, cousins and in-laws. They had no formal connection with the business and the existence of their portraits in the firmÃ's collection underlines the extent to which Barings was once a family-owned business.
Amongst the earliest portraits is one of the bankÃ's founder, Sir Francis Baring, by Benjamin West, an American by birth who was President of the Royal Academy and who enjoyed royal patronage. Following the completion of this picture in 1804, the Barings commissioned their portraits from Sir Thomas Lawrence, the most distinguished portrait artist of Regency England. The Baring Archive contains five works by this artist.
A particular highlight of the collection is a portrait by the leading American artist Gilbert Stuart. It is of Senator William Bingham, a leading United States-based client of the firm whose two daughters married two sons of the firmÃ's founder.
In the mid-nineteenth century, the family commissioned from John Linnell, an artist known as much for his landscapes as for his portraits. The collection contains three of his works including one of Thomas Baring, the senior partner in the mid nineteenth century.
Most prominent amongst the twentieth century commissions is a group of five portraits by the leading society artist, Ambrose McEvoy. These were commissioned in 1926 and are of the four senior partners who had led the bank from the 1890s and who, in the early-1920s, were on the point of retirement. Most notable is the 1926 portrait of the four partners gathered in the office of the senior partner, Lord Revelstoke.
There are many other portraits in the collection, by artists such as John Jackson (1778-1831), George Richmond (1809-96), James Sant (1820-1916), Frank Dadd (1826-97), Rudolf Lehmann (1851-1931), Sir William Orpen (1878-1931), Sir James Gunn (1893-1964) and, most recently, Paul Benney.; The Baring Archive Limited | Subjects: | Economic history Banks Economic activity Economic affairs | Source: | Cornucopia - Discovering UK Collections | Identifier: | oai:www.cornucopia.org.uk:8843 | Go to resource |
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