Sarah, Lady Fetherstonhaugh, 1751. © The Fetherstonhaugh Collection, Uppark (The National Trust) Photo NTPL / John Hammond www.nationaltrust.org.uk

Review: Pompeo Batoni at the National Gallery until May 18 2008

For wealthy 18th century tourists on their Grand Tour, a visit to Pompeo Batoni was as much on the itinerary of the Italian leg of their European trip as was a chance to admire the Coliseum.

Batoni produced souvenir portraits of privileged tourists’ cultured travels. Examples of these works therefore form a substantial part of the National Gallery’s latest exhibition in the Sainsbury Wing running until May 18.

However, the purpose of this exhibition is to dispel the myth that Batoni was merely a face painter. Gaining such a reputation after his death meant his demotion from being seen by his contemporaries as one of the greatest artists of his age and the Last Old Master. Today he is known to most, if at all, only as a name on a painting where the subject is the feature of note.

This situation is clear when the companion Fetherstonhaugh portraits are encountered in their usual setting of Uppark. The portraits are fascinating; but who is this Pompeo Batoni?

Portrait of Sir Humphry Morice, 1761-62, Sir James and Lady Graham, North Conyers, North Yorkshire. © Photo Glen Segal

This gathering of over 60 of his works from public and private collections - including the National Trust’s Fetherstonhaugh portraits - aims to take Batoni out of obscurity. In so doing, it hopes to provide us with a vivid appreciation of his artistic achievements beyond his ability to record the wealth and status of a narrow range of subjects.

These wealthy subjects are however surprisingly compelling. Batoni was unwittingly very much a history painter in capturing the concerns of these young travellers who would later be the Lords, Hons and Sirs of the future.

There’s Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn with his tutor and companion; people of breeding in that age did not travel alone. Colonel William Gordon is seen, standing in tartan, draped toga-like and looking to conquer rather than visit Rome. Thomas Dundas did not just want a picture of himself, but a posse of Roman statuary too.

Batoni was initially a painter of allegorical and devotional paintings commissioned by the Italian elite. His early works, such as the Triumph of Venice, were allegorical and crammed full of symbolism.

The portraits of the Grand Tour reflect this charging of paintings with meaning, in as much as Batoni was inventing another range of symbolism to denote the way these young men wanted to be seen, once back home. Those statues in the background? Those ruins? That sketch by Raphael held in the hand? – that’s culture that is.

Colonel the Hon. William Gordon, 1765-66. By kind permission of the National Trust for Scotland/Fyvie Castle collection. © The National Trust for Scotland

The Italian audience did not care for portraits though. In 1780, John Moore observed that, other than the occasional three-quarter length portrait of a pope, there were no ‘faces staring out of canvases’ in Italian homes.

That said, the first painting in the exhibition, The Vision of Saint Philip Neri, makes us realise that at only 25, Batoni was already able to produce representations of people that not only fulfilled a commission but were also filled with emotional depth. Studies of saints and God, The Father in this first room help us appreciate how he later extended this to represent clearly the states of mind of his portrait sitters, for good or bad.

There’s the swagger of Col Hon. William Gordon; the doughy face and unformed mind of Lord North; the clear respect he felt for Henry Swinburne and Sir Humphry Morice. Batoni was no mere recorder of an accurate likeness but the distiller of something a bit deeper than that.

Two Italian portraits show this. Princess Guistinaiani, in the final room, is 44 going on 84, bringing to life the truism found in the allegory painting Time Orders Old Age to Destroy Beauty. Clearly, here, Old Age has acted somewhat prematurely on Time’s orders. Despite this, she stares at us boldly and confidently, smiling slightly with a mouth perhaps less filled with teeth than it should be. Wearing her latest and risqué fashion of chemise and sash, her confidence, born of status and wealth, overlays the superficial aspects of her ‘accurate likeness’.

Earlier in the exhibition, Duchess Girolania does much the same but this time the picture is shockingly intimate, boldly engaging the viewer whilst undoing her peignoir, discarding her pearls. This portrait was a commission to hang above the door inside her boudoir where only she and her future husband would see it.

Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn, 4th Bt., Thomas Apperley, and Captain Edward Hamilton, 1768-72. © Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales

Such emotional depth is made possible by Batoni’s use of texture and colour to bring the subjects into the room with us. The braided hair of beautiful Mercy in Truth and Mercy, the lamb in Meekness, the cuffs and brocade in the portrait of Robert Clements. Any student of costume and textiles will learn much about the fashions and fascinations of the elegant eighteenth century gent about Rome through a study of Batoni.

Batoni not only excelled in texture and colouration in his paintings, but also in their all round quality as objects. It is not known who taught him to prepare canvasses or layer his paint, but today the still vibrant colours and the clarity of the surfaces testify to his skill as a technician. He even worked on the details of framing. Many of the frames you see are the ones he commissioned and, as one of his letters makes clear, for which he billed his patrons.

This concern with money is evident in how he ran what was essentially a business operation, charging per figure, including dogs and statues. Often he would take three commissions at a time, charging a 40% down payment for each. This led to criticism that he was too slow to complete his work. He claimed it was diligence and perfectionism that impeded him and that he was mindful that one slip could ruin his reputation.

There is clearly truth in this, in that he would often recall models to sit even when he was nearing completion of a work. However, his need to keep the money rolling in is also clear - not least because he had 12 children.

Louisa Grenville, later Countess Stanhope, 1761. The Board of Trustees of the Chevening Estate. © Photo courtesy of the owner

Whilst the curator drew our attention to the uncommon quantity of beautifully portrayed dogs in the portraits, my eye was drawn to the amazing array of childlike faces of angels and the behaviour of Batoni’s cherubs.

Batoni clearly loved dogs, but he loved children too and portrayed them with emotional accuracy, from Christ gleefully spearing a dragon in The Virgin and Child in Glory (much to the amazement of the youthful angelic cellist to the left of the painting) or Christ about to hit the saint with a lily in The Vision of Saint Philip Neri to the face of Cupid peering out between Arthur Saunders Gore and his wife Catherine.

Most stunning of these representations is the portrait of Louisa Grenville, later Countess Stanhope, painted in 1761 when she was just three. Dressed in perhaps her first and finest grown-up outfit, she clutches her puppy and looks not like a mini-lady but a dressed-up little girl, complete with rumpled apron.

If we wanted to appreciate Batoni as more than a face painter, then this exhibition clearly fits the bill. This is because the context of his earlier paintings, along with the later allegory paintings, mainly for his Italian customers, shows that the Grand Tour portraits come within a wider context of emotionally informed portrayals of people and stories.

Have you seen this show? Why not let us know what you think?