![Sample our Built Environment journals, sign in here to start your access, Latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5926/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Built-Environment.jpg"})
Abstract
Doncaster’s civic Mansion House contains, amongst other paintings, 23 portraits in oils acquired between 1804 and 1985 in four of its principal rooms. A few were commissioned for the building, but most were obtained by gift from a range of donors. This article explains the occasion and examines the motives for these acquisitions and suggests some mutual features which provide historical links between them.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Quoted in Hamilton, A Strange Business, 294.
2 Leader, History of the Company of Cutlers, vol. 2, 80.
3 The collection at the Cutlers Hall is outlined in Leader, vol. 2, 74–80. By 1900, the company had managed to lose a collection of busts presented by Sir Francis Chantrey.
4 Blake, George Stubbs, 148–9.
5 Many of the artists mentioned in this article have entries in either the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography or The Dictionary of Art (or both). Consequently biographical reference is made only where this is not so, or where a supplementary source is useful. The Mansion House portraits, and those of York and Hull (but not the Cutlers Company), are to be found on the Art UK website (https://artuk.org). The website can also be used to search the works of individual artists mentioned here.
6 Daily Telegraph, obituary, 9 July 2010; and see The Times, 7 December 2021, 21.
7 Lester, A Fine Eye for Colour, 12–24; H. Morgan, ‘John Jackson’ (unpub. M.A. diss., University of Leeds, 1956); Owen and Brown, Collector of Genius, 156–7; Walker, Regency Portraits, 1, 277, and 2, plates 645, 646. Virtually all of Jackson’s surviving correspondence, comprising letters to his family, is to be found at North Yorkshire Record Office, ref. ZFO.
8 Hull History Centre [HHC], T CRE/11/2, Letter of G. P. Green and draft minutes, 30 Apr. & 9 Jun. 1855; T CRE/11/4, Portrait committee minutes, 19 Jun. 1855. For George Pycock sr, see Neave, Hull, 13, 103.
9 HHC, Hull Packet, 13 Apr. 1860, 8 Dec. 1865.
10 MacCarthy, Byron, 216, 534. The book uses Phillips’ portrait on its front cover.
11 Morse, John Hanson Walker, 93.
12 Martin et al., Doncaster.
13 Girouard, English Town, 84, 135, 139, 141, plate 172; Harman and Pevsner, Sheffield and the South, 216–7. See https://doncastermansionhouse.co.uk; https://doncaster.gov.uk/services/culture-leisure-tourism/doncaster-mansion-house
14 Leech, James Paine, 99–101, 182–3; Gilbert, ‘Furniture by Local Makers’.
15 Paine, Plans, Elevations; Barber, ‘Doncaster Mansion House’.
16 Doncaster Archives [DA], Doncaster Borough Courtier, 28 July 1770.
17 Drummond, ‘Sir Sampson Gideon’.
18 A portrait of her elder sister and brother, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1786–7, is to be found at the Barber Institute of Fine Art, University of Birmingham.
19 DA, Doncaster Borough Courtier, 8 Dec. 1803, 18 Sept. 1804, 27 Sept. 1804.
20 The box survives, holding his admission as freeman, 5 Sept. 1735: Sheffield Archives [SA], WWM/DEEDS/808(a).
21 DA, Doncaster Borough Courtier, 26 Sept. 1776.
22 DA, Doncaster Borough Courtier, 9 Oct. 1804, 26 Sept. 1805.
23 Millar, Later Georgian Pictures, 108, item no. 1045. Reynolds billed the Marquess for £157.10s. for the portrait, 2 Jul. 1780: SA, WWM/927.
24 The Fitzwilliam title in the peerage of Ireland was created in 1716 and in 1742 a peerage of Great Britain was awarded to the third (Irish) earl. The family numbered its successive title-holders from the Irish earldom, even after the supersession of Irish titles of nobility in 1922.
25 Barber, ‘William Wrightson’.
26 Wilson, Great Yorkshire Election.
27 DA, Council minute book, 1 Nov. 1826; SA, F69/51, Address from Doncaster corporation.
28 SA, WWM/Misc 197, Letters relating to the unfinished portrait, Jan.–May 1830. A later reference to the Doncaster portrait (Council minutes, 14 May 1856, and Doncaster Gazette, 16 May 1856), wrongly suggests that the portrait by Lawrence was later transferred to the Mansion House. The Lawrence portrait remains in private ownership, but there is a copy by Hugh Thompson in the Cutlers Hall, Sheffield, which is not identical to the Mansion House portrait. I am grateful to Dr Joan Unwin for access to the Cutlers Hall to verify this.
29 There is a mezzotint by J. R. Jackson of the portrait, dated 1869, at the National Portrait Gallery, reference NPG D 36960; DA, Council minute book, 1895–1912, 2 Jan. 1899.
30 DA, AB2/2/10, Council minute book 1895–1912, 2 Jan. 1899; Doncaster Gazette, 6 Jan. 1899, 6; for Morris’s obituary see Doncaster Gazette, 25 May 1900, 5.
31 This portrait hung in the Mansion House until after 1948, and is currently held as a ‘portrait of an unknown gentleman 1899’ in the Art Gallery collection.
32 Casey and Salmon, ‘Charles Wood’.
33 DA, AB/2/6/38/4, Mansion House inventory book, 1849–1866, list of 1865.
34 DA, Council minute book 1860–1872, 10 May 1864, 24 Jun. 1864; AB/TREAS/1/3, Annual Accounts of the Corporation, 1864–65, 9; Millar, Victorian Pictures, 88, 287–88.
35 William Aldam of Frickley was then sheriff; his papers (DA, DD/WA) contain requests for seats in the court room and a small amount of other material relating to the case.
36 Independent, 27 Mar 2011; the letters are published in M. Seeney, ‘Maurice Schwabe: A Name on a Piece of Paper’, The Wildean, 40 (Jan. 2012), 89–101.
37 DA, AB 2/2/10, Council minute book, 1895–1912, 27 Nov. 1901.
38 DA, AB 2/6/38/4, Mansion House inventory book, 1849–66.
39 DA, Council minute book, 26 Jun. 1835, 18 Aug. 1835; Barber, ‘Robert Baxter’.
40 Cooke had chaired an anti-corporation public meeting: see DA, Doncaster Borough Courtier, 25 Nov. 1835.
41 Colllinge, ‘Bryan Cooke (1756–1821)’.
42 Beetham had also painted a portrait of William Sheardown, Cooke’s immediate predecessor as mayor, which is now in Doncaster Art Gallery.
43 National Portrait Gallery website, image reference D34102.
44 DA, DY/DAW12/3, Dawson, estate agent, Cooke client papers, memorial pamphlet.
45 Doncaster Chronicle, 29 May 1874, 4–5.
46 DA, Doncaster Borough Courtier, 13 Nov. 1835.
47 An engraving in The Illustrated London News of a train arriving with its race-going passengers at the (temporary) station is reproduced in Grinling, Great Northern Railway, 86.
48 In Grinling, Great Northern Railway, 175.
49 DA, AB2/2/6, Council minute book, 1872–1883, 22 Nov 1876. Grimthorpe famously inflicted more of this will on the redesign of St Albans cathedral, and is buried in its grounds.
50 Grosskurth, John Addington Symonds; Doncaster Gazette, 2 Aug.; 18 Aug., 1; 20 Sept., 1; 11 Oct., 4; 15 Nov. 1878, 5; DA, AB2/2/6, Council minute book, 1872–1883, 14 Aug. 1878. Subsequent damage has since led to the transfer of the portrait to the art gallery.
51 DA, AB2/5/8, Special committees minute book, 1922–24, 20 May 1922.
52 Wilkes, Whilst I Live I’ll Crow.
53 Doncaster Gazette, 6 Sept. 1878, 8.
54 Sykes, The Big House, 181, 242, 243; Doncaster Gazette, 15 Sept. 1879, 5.
55 Neave, Hull, 199.
56 DA, Register of Private Boxes, AB/RACE/10.
57 D. Mellor, ‘Folklore and Traditions of the Railway Industry with Special Reference to Doncaster’ (unpub. M.A. diss., University of Leeds, 1967), 269.
58 Ridley, Bertie, 388.
59 DA, AB2/5/10, Special committees minute book, 7 March 1934.
60 Or it could be his successor, William Bright (1783–1824). DA, Borough courtier, 1759–1814, 15 Jan. 1778, Corporation minute book, 1814–1835, 14 Oct. 1814, 8 Nov. 1814, 16 Sept. 1824. Bright’s posthumous son, C. W. Bright, became regius professor of ecclesiastical history at Oxford in 1868.
61 DA, Corporation minute book 1824–1835, transcript of proceedings of 23 Apr. 1831.
62 Doncaster Gazette, 17 Oct. 1856, 8.
63 DA, Council minute book, 1814–1835, 7 Oct. 1818, 8 Dec. 1820, 31 May 1827, 4 May 1831; Doncaster Gazette, 17 Oct. 1856, 8; I am grateful to Mrs Elaine Burford, who is researching a catalogue of Ellerby’s paintings, for information about the artist.
64 DA, Council minute book, 1860–1872, 12 Feb. 1867.
65 Lockhart, Charles Lindley, Viscount Halifax, vol. 2, 252–5.
66 Walton, History of the Diocese of Sheffield, 81.
67 DA, AB2/5/9, Special committees minute book, 1924–1929, 27 Jul. 1927.
68 Doncaster Gazette, 6 Jan. 1899, 6.
69 DA, AB/TOWN CLERK/3/565, concerning Fisher’s compensation.
70 The series of photographs of mayoral portraits from 1835 to 1974 were removed on local government reorganisation in 1974 and are now held by DA, AB/MAYOR. Since 2002, with the election of an executive mayor, the civic mayor is now a purely ceremonial post in Doncaster.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Brian Barber
Brian Barber has contributed a dozen articles on various aspects of Yorkshire history to this journal and several to other publications since his retirement in 2006. He was general editor of the six volumes of the Wakefield Court Rolls series of this society which were published from 2014 to 2021.