George Gage with two attendants by Anthony van Dyck

Anthony Van Dyck’s portrait in the National Gallery, London, catalogued as showing George Gage with two attendants, has been acclaimed as an ‘ambitious and innovative’ production of his early years (Pl 3).1 In this unusual ‘conversation piece’, displaying the lively interaction of three figures, Van Dyck portrays the principal subject of the paintings: a youngish man, wrapped in a stylish black cloak, in a pose conveying the innate grace, but also the skilfully-crafted nonchalance, or sprezzatura, of a courtier. The man’s gaze, in contrast, is intently focused on a figure on the right of the painting. This second figure leans forward, urgently and insistently drawing the attention of the first to an Antique statue he is holding.2 In the background between the two, a third figure – of African origin – can be made out. While less conspicuous than the other two, his gaze is nevertheless directed at the viewer; he laughs while pointing, presumably dismissively, to the statue.

Attribution of the painting to Van Dyck has rarely been doubted, and it can be deduced that the scene depicts that of an intense debate over the purchase or authenticity of a work of art.3 Written documentation, however, for both the identification of the principal figure and also for the provenance of the painting during almost the first 200 years of its existence has so far been lacking. Hitherto, the first recorded reference to the painting is an item recorded in the posthumous sale in 1795 of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s collection of Old Masters. In the catalogue for that sale the painting was listed as a portrait by Van Dyck of ‘Rubens, half-length with two other artists’.4 This unconvincing identification of the principal figure as Rubens persisted for many years. In 1931 Ludwig Burchard suggested that the figure could be that of Daniel Nijs (1572–1647), the art collector and dealer who was Charles I’s agent in the purchase of the Mantuan collection.5 Since it bore little resemblance to a contemporary depiction of Nijs (Pl 1), this hypothesis also lacked credibility.6

But in 1969 Oliver Millar observed that principal figure in the painting was leaning on an ‘ancient sarcophagus’ displaying the upper part of the coat of arms of the Gage family of Firle in Sussex. He suggested the possibility that the principal figure was that of George Gage (1582–1638), son of one of the younger sons of that family, a distinguished art dealer and diplomat, described as ‘a graceful person, [of] good address, well skilled in music, painting and architecture … a master in Latin, French, Italian and Spanish’.7 Millar details Gage’s activities between 1616 and 1617 in negotiating pictures from Rubens and other artists on behalf of Sir Dudley Carleton. ‘George Gage’, he claims, ‘knew his way round the Antwerp studios.’ Millar suggests that during those years, and again in 1620, Gage must have met Van Dyck in Rubens’s studio.8

Contemporary sources reveal that Gage, a guest of the Earl and Countess of Arundel in Rome in 1614, and by 1623 travelling in the company of the Countess, was also well acquainted with the Arundels, the greatest of the English collectors. David Howarth has therefore speculated that in 1620 it was Gage, of all of the Earl of Arundel’s agents on the continent, who was most likely to have recommended Van Dyck to Arundel in England.10 But, most significantly, Van Dyck himself has documented his connection to Gage. In a dedication to Gage in 1635 of Vorsterman’s engraving of his Lamentation, Van Dyck records a deep and lasting bond of friendship between the two, one formed earlier in Rome. ‘Perillustri apud Anglos Domino D Georgio Gagi mutuae consuetudinis olim in Urbe [Rome] contractae, nunc perpetuum eisdem amoris argumentum’ (To Mr George Gage, most highly regarded among the English, as a lasting token of the mutual sympathies once established in the Eternal City and of the same affection now). The ‘mutuae consuetudinis’ must have developed in 1622, the date given to the painting by most recent studies, when both Van Dyck and Gage were in Rome together.11

1 Daniel Nijs by Odoardo Fialetii (1573–1638), 1615. Engraving, Frontispiece, CG Gigli, La Pittura Trionfante, Venice, 1615. National Gallery of Art Library, Washington, David K.E. Bruce fund’

Millar’s identification of the principal figure in the portrait with that of George Gage rests on the heraldic reference to the Gage family in the painting, and has not been universally accepted. Gregory Martin has challenged the whole basis of Millar’s argument, postulating that the architectural motif in the painting was pseudo-Antique in reference rather than specifically heraldic in meaning and thus can provide no guide to the identity of a family, still less the principal figure in the portrait.12 But most opinion has tended to agree with Millar. It seems unlikely that elements of the Gage coat of arms (a saltire, a ram’s horn and possibly a sun in splendour) were assembled by chance and not deliberately selected to convey a personal reference. Howarth suggests that in his Continence of Scipio, painted in 1620, Van Dyck might similarly have depicted an architectural fragment of Arundel’s in order to refer to his commissioning of the painting for the Duke of Buckingham.13 Certainly, if the reference to the Gage family is accepted, George Gage was uniquely qualified to be the subject of the portrait; no other member of his family is known to have had connections with the art collecting world of the early 17th century, still less a deep friendship with Van Dyck himself. Here for the first time, documentary evidence will be offered to corroborate Millar’s identification of the portrait with the Gage family and thus with George Gage himself.

Philip Sidney, 3rd Earl of Leicester (1619–1698), was one of the most avid art collectors in late-17th-century England, amassing a collection of several thousand works of art: paintings, drawings, prints and statuary, at his London residence of Leicester House (Pl 2).14 Just a few days before his death in March 1698, Leicester added a final codicil to his will of 1684. In this he not only generously increased legacies to his family and servants, but also bequeathed a number of named paintings – all chosen for their appropriateness – as mementoes to his closest and most favoured relatives. He left to his nephew Robert Spencer, 2nd Earl of Sunderland (1641–1702), ‘his special friend and relation’ and an enthusiast for Italian art, a version of Guido Reni’s Susanna and the Elders. To his grandson John Sidney (1680–1727), he left the ‘picture of Sir John Sidney by old Hilliard’. To his nephew and executor Thomas Pelham (1653–1712), son of Sir John Pelham (1624–1703), 3rd baronet, of Halland, Sussex, and Leicester’s sister, Lady Lucy (née Sidney), he left ‘the picture done by Vandike of Sir John [sic] Gage in three Heads’.15

Perhaps Thomas Pelham was assigned the portrait simply because he had always admired it. But he had also a particular link to the portrait: Firle, the home of the main branch of the Gage family was less than six miles from Halland, the seat of the enterprising and prosperous Pelhams. It seems probable that Leicester bequeathed the painting to his nephew at least in part for its local connection. It might be the case that the gift was designed as a celebration of neighbourly friendship. But the two families, although both among the leading gentry families of the county, differed greatly over religion and politics. The Gages were staunch Roman Catholics. In the Civil Wars, the family at Firle had adopted a strategy of isolation and neutrality in order to weather the storm; by the late 17^th century, the head of the family, the 4th baronet, Sir John Gage, was a supporter of James II.16 The Pelhams, on the other hand, puritan in sympathy, had been active on the side of Parliament in the 1640s and by the end of the 17th century were identified with the dominant Whig interest.17 The gift of the portrait, aesthetically a more ambitious a work of art than anything then owned by the Gages and inherited from an aristocratic uncle, might have been particularly appreciated by Thomas, not so much as an illustration of local friendship but rather as a trophy demonstrating Pelham family superiority in the competition for status and leadership in the county community.

Whatever the reason for Leicester’s selection of the painting as an appropriate legacy for his nephew, this bequest of one of his works of art – documented as a Van Dyck portrait of a Gage with two other figures – can fairly confidently be identified with that of the National Gallery’s George Gage with two attendants.18 Even if the particular connection with George himself had been forgotten (or confused), this bequest in Leicester’s will provides the earliest documentary evidence that at the end of the 17^th century the painting was known as a portrait by Van Dyck of a member of the Gage family – a member who must surely have been George Gage.

2 Philip Sidney, 3rd Earl of Leicester (1619–1698), by Godfrey Kneller (1646–1723), 1685. Oil on canvas, 128.2 x 105.5 cm. Penshurst Place, Kent. By kind permission of Viscount De L’Isle from his private collection at Penshurst Place, Kent, England

The history of the painting between its execution in Rome in 1622 and its re-appearance in London in the sale of Reynolds’s collection in 1795 has likewise never been documented. Nevertheless, from 1698 until 1795 its whereabouts can be traced with reasonable certainty. Having been acquired by Thomas Pelham in 1698, it seems to have remained in the Pelham family for two generations. Thomas inherited the baronetcy on his father’s death in 1703 and, maintaining his family’s upward mobility, in 1706 was elevated to the peerage as 1st Baron Pelham of Laughton. On his death in 1712 he left his inherited lands and property – which would have included the portrait of George Gage – to his eldest son, Thomas Pelham (1693–1768), and money from his personal estate to his other children.19 But not only did his son and heir inherit the Pelham title and estates in Sussex, he also inherited a new title and vast estates in the midlands from his mother’s brother, John Holles (1662–1711), 1^st Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (in a second creation of the title), whose surname he added to his own.

The new duke (also confusingly entitled 1st Duke of Newcastle, but in the third creation of the title), spent the rest of his life absorbed in national politics. For over 40 years from 1717 to 1762 he was one of the leading figures in the Whig administrations that governed Britain in the mid-18^th century. But the pursuit of power led him to neglect his estates and to dissipate his wealth in the lavish entertainments and generosity he found necessary to fund his political career. His income, estimated at a huge £32,000 a year in 1717, had been reduced to £9,000 a year by the time of his death in 1768; by then his debts have been reckoned at over £79,000.20 Childless, and with his widow provided for, the Duke charged his executors in his will to sell his real and personal estates so that his debts be ‘fully paid’.21 Within a year of his death, the household effects of Newcastle House, Lincolns Inn Fields, his elegantly furnished London residence and the centre of his political entertaining, as well as those of his suburban house, Claremont, near Hampton Court, were sold. Shortly afterwards, the houses themselves were sold. 22

It can be surmised that during his career the duke had removed George Gage from the Pelham family home at Halland to add to the decorative splendour of Newcastle House (or perhaps Claremont), and that it was from the sale of their contents that Reynolds bought the painting. No catalogue survives of the sale, but Francis Broun has found confirmation of the purchase by Reynolds from the Duke’s goods. According to Broun, Reynolds added a note in his copy of Walpole’s Anecdotes of Painting in England at a passage referring to Van Dyck’s portrait of Rubens’s wife: ‘He [Van Dyck] drew likewise Rubens’ picture ½ length and in the same picture Martin Vander Enden bringing in a small statue. This was in the possession of the duke of Newcastle at whose sale it was purchased by Sir Joshua Reynolds.’23 The reference to the ‘small statue’ certainly identifies the painting, although Maarten van den Enden (1605–1673), the Antwerp printer and publisher, would have been too young to have been the secondary figure in the painting.

On at least one occasion, Reynolds had been employed by the Duke, and would thus probably have seen the painting in situ at Newcastle House and welcomed the chance to buy it later.24 But it seems he was never close enough to the Duke to have been commissioned to paint his portrait when perhaps he might have learnt of the Gage connection – if indeed the Duke himself had any memory of it. It can be conjectured that, on the strength of Walpole’s reference to a Van Dyck portrait of Rubens’s wife, Reynolds surmised that his purchase from the Duke’s sale was a Van Dyck portrait of Rubens himself. All connection with the Gage family was thus lost until Millar’s recognition of the Gage coat-of-arms in 1969.

It has been argued here that, from 1698 to 1824, the portrait of George Gage had travelled from Leicester House, London, to Halland, Sussex, from there back to London and to Newcastle House, Lincoln’s Inn Fields (or Claremont, Hampton Court), then on to Sir Joshua Reynolds’s house at 31 Leicester Fields, and finally to its home in the newly founded National Gallery. But when and how it had been acquired by Philip Sidney, 3rd Earl of Leicester, in the earlier 17th century is undocumented and remains obscure. The painting, either commissioned by Gage himself, or presented to the sitter as a gift from Van Dyck in token of their friendship, was presumably brought back to England from Rome by Gage after its completion in 1622. At the time it was painted, Gage was present in Rome on a major diplomatic mission: securing a papal dispensation to allow the Infanta Maria of Spain to marry James I’s son, Charles, Prince of Wales. In 1623 Gage returned triumphantly to London with the dispensation, but the refusal of the Infanta to contemplate marriage with a heretic, and the furious opposition of the English public to the marriage of the heir to the throne to a Roman Catholic princess, ruined his efforts.

Gage was known for his faith – though he was probably not a priest as was once thought – and from then onwards was too compromised by his Catholicism to be employed on further diplomatic missions.25 Instead, fragmentary evidence indicates that he retained his artistic interests, contributing, for instance, to the completion of a painting for the Earl of Arundel and acting as architect for the Countess of Arundel’s rebuilding of Tart Hall, her London ‘casino’.26 He also developed a career as a business entrepreneur and, among other ventures, became the manager of a company awarded the monopoly of soap-making in 1632. Unlikely though this undertaking sounds, the list of his fellow monopolists reveals their common bond as Catholics and gentry.27 Although the business failed, Gage himself apparently prospered and was able to build himself a fine house in St Giles-in-the-Fields. But in 1638 he was struck down with a sudden illness and died within a month. In his will made just before his death he ordered his executors to sell all his property and goods – including presumably his portrait by Van Dyck – in order to pay his debts and provide legacies for named friends and servants.28

A number of possible options can be suggested for the fate of the portrait over the following years. With no established art market in London at the time, it seems probable that the painting would have been offered to an existing art collector or someone with a personal connection to Gage. Those most likely to be interested would have been Gage’s patrons and friends the Arundels, and in particular the Countess. But in 1641 as the political situation deteriorated, the Countess was to leave England, taking many of her valuable possessions with her. Following her death in exile in Amsterdam in 1654, in April 1655 an inventory of her possessions, which by then also included much of her husband’s great collection, listed a ‘ritratto de Mr Gage’.29

It is possible that this was the painting later acquired by the future 3rd Earl of Leicester, then entitled Lord Viscount Lisle, and the one subsequently bequeathed to his Pelham nephew. By the mid-17th century, Lisle was already an enthusiastic collector of works of art. During the Interregnum he purchased over a hundred items – paintings, Antique statuary and gems, as well as renaissance bronzes – from the sale of the ‘Late King’s Goods’ (all of which had to be returned to the crown on the Restoration in 1660).30 But from 1642 onwards he had also been a committed parliamentarian and, for the greater part of the Interregnum from 1649–1659, a member of the governing councils of state. In October 1658 he was able to obtain permission – no doubt with his own interests in mind – from his colleagues on the council to allow Nicholas Lanier, formerly Charles I’s Master of Music, but then currently exiled in the Netherlands and acting as an agent for art collectors, to import works of art. Such importation was, at the time, normally prohibited. A similar though unattributed request – but one also almost certainly made by Lisle – had been agreed to by the Council of State in August 1655.31 Inheritance of the Arundel collections was the subject of prolonged family litigation, but an unknown number of works of art were apparently disposed of by the countess’s only surviving son, Lord Stafford, following her death. It could therefore have been the case that Lanier himself (or some intermediary) acquired the ‘Mr Gage’, from Stafford, and with the Council’s permission was able to send it (and no doubt other works of art) back to England and to a welcome place in Lord Lisle’s growing collection.

3 George Gage with two attendants by Anthony van Dyck