Portrait of a Baron

Acquired by Fairfax Murray as a portrait of the Earl of Egremont by Richard Wilson. However, the sitter is shown as a Baron and wears the badge of the Order of the Bath and therefore cannot be Egremont. The date of the portrait would appear to be c.1735-40 and the age of the sitter perhaps forty. This reduces the number of possible sitters to five: 1. John West (1693-1766), 16th Baron de la Warr 1723, KB 1725, created Earl de la Warr 1761. 2. John Monson (1693-1748), KB 1725, created Baron Monson 1728. 3. Robert Walpole (1701-51), created Baron Walpole 1723, KB 1725, succeeded as 2nd Earl of Orford 1745. 4. John Hobart (1694-1756), KB 1725, created Baron Hobart 1728, created Earl of Buckinghamshire in 1746. 5. Thomas Coke (1699-1759), KB 1725, created Baron Lovel in 1728, created Earl of Leicester in 1744. Of these, there are no extant portraits of 1 and 2; none of the portraits of 3 (an unattributed whole-length in robes in a private collection), 4 (a whole length in roves by Hudson engraved by Faber) or 5 (by Casali, Hudson and Richardson, all at Holkham Hall), agrees closely enough with DPG595 to confirm an identity. Constable regarded the attribution to Richard Wilson as 'doubtful' and Murray instead proposed Benjamin Wilson.