Sir Thomas Lawrence’s portrait of Shute Barrington (1752) rehung following move
Merton’s portrait of Bishop Shute Barrington has now been rehung following its move from the Hall and a light clean. One of the finest artworks in the College’s collection, the painting by celebrated portraitist Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830) is now located on the Fitzjames Staircase, appropriately hanging opposite a work by Lawrence’s great rival, John Hoppner (1758-1810).
Purchased and presented to the College in the late 19th century by a former Bursar, William Esson, the Barrington portrait was subsequently catalogued by art historian Kenneth Garlick as No. 67(a) in his Sir Thomas Lawrence: A Complete Catalogue of the Oil Paintings (Oxford, 1989).
Born in Bristol in 1769, Lawrence’s artistic talent was apparent from a young age, when he would draw pencil portraits of visitors to his father’s coaching inn at Devizes. His great breakthrough as a mature portraitist in oils came in 1790, when the full-length portraits of Queen Charlotte and Elizabeth Farren which he exhibited at the Royal Academy that year won him national renown. Further success soon followed, with Lawrence appointed Associate Member of the Royal Academy in 1791, Painter-in-Ordinary to George III in 1792 and a full Royal Academician in 1794. The death of Hoppner in 1810 helped to cement Lawrence’s position as the pre-eminent British portraitist of his age and the subsequent decade saw his career crowned first by a knighthood (in 1815) and then by his appointment to the position of President of the Royal Academy (in 1820). These years also witnessed the development of an increasingly international dimension to Lawrence’s work as he was commissioned by the future George IV to paint the series of portraits of European monarchs, statesmen and generals (including Emperor Alexander I of Russia, who has his own Merton connection, having briefly stayed at the College in June 1814), which now hangs in the Waterloo Chamber at Windsor Castle.
Painted c.1795 and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1796, Merton’s portrait of Shute Barrington therefore dates from a relatively early stage in Lawrence’s career, when he was still experiencing his first flush of success on the national stage. Barrington himself had come up to Merton as a gentleman commoner in 1752, graduating BA and becoming a fellow in 1755. Well-connected, he went on to enjoy a successful ecclesiastical career, becoming Bishop of Llandaff in 1769, of Salisbury in 1782, and finally of Durham in 1791. Believing “genuine Christianity” to consist of “the union of pure devotion with universal benevolence”, Barrington applied his influence in aid of a number of philanthropic causes and was a notable supporter of William Wilberforce, not least in regard to his abolitionist activities. Barrington was himself a firm opponent of the slave trade and in a 1775 sermon had branded it “a traffic as inhuman in the mode of carrying it on, as it is unjustifiable in its principle”.
As regards the Merton portrait itself, although there are details, such as the academic cap, which may provide some hint regarding his philanthropic interests (in this case, his patronage of educational causes), the humanity which Barrington so clearly displayed in his opposition to slavery remains well-concealed in this decidedly imposing image. Be-robed in a flowing gown, painted with the fresh and lively brushwork so much a hallmark of Lawrence’s work, and supported by the ancient authority of the imposing (and at the time also increasingly fashionable) Gothicism of the architectural background, in this painting Lawrence instead employs his considerable artistic powers to endow Barrington with all the grandeur and gravity proper to an episcopal pillar of the late-18th-century Anglican order.
Further information on Lawrence’s portrait of Shute Barrington can be found in Matthew Grimley’s contribution to the Treasures of Merton College (London, 2013) entitled ‘The Shute Barrington Portrait’. The same book also provides more information on Alexander I’s visit to Merton in June 1814, and on the jasper vase which he later gave to the College to commemorate the event, in the section entitled ‘Russian Treasures’, written by Mikhail Kizilov.
- Copies of Treasures of Merton College may be purchased from the Merton College Development Office - email development@merton.ox.ac.uk.
[Article written by Richard Manning (2007)]
