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Robert Price (1717–1761)

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Robert Price, portrait by Thomas Gainsborough

Robert Price (1717–1761) was an English gentleman, known as an artist for his drawings, and as a musical amateur. He contributed to the garden design at the family property of Foxley, Herefordshire, was an art patron, and was the father of Uvedale Price, theorist of the picturesque.

Early life

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In this family group by Bartholomew Dandridge, Robert Price wears a hat, fourth from the left[1]

He was the son of Uvedale Tomkyns Price and his wife Anne Somerset, daughter of Lord Arthur Somerset who was the second son of Henry Somerset, 1st Duke of Beaufort.[2][3] He was educated at Winchester College.[4]

Grand Tour

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Price undertook an extended Grand Tour in Italy and Geneva, from 1738 to 1741. Much of it was in the company of William Windham and his tutor Benjamin Stillingfleet. They were joined also by Richard Pococke. In Rome they took art lessons from Giovanni Battista Busiri, and Price studied music under Andrea Basili.[4]

In Geneva, Price took part in the "Common Room" group of expatriate Britons running amateur dramatics in 1740–1, supplying incidental music and painting scenery. Besides Windham and Stillingfleet, Richard Aldworth was a major contributor to the plays and pantomimes, with George Hervey playing female parts en travesti. Others involved were Thomas Dampier and his pupil Benjamin Tate, and Thomas Hamilton, 7th Earl of Haddington with his brother and tutor.[5] There was an orchestra led by Gaspard Fritz.[6]

Some of the group, including Price, with Pococke and Walter Chetwynd (died 1786, the Fellow of King's College, Cambridge),[7] made a six-day journey in June 1741 to visit Chamonix, the Mer de Glace and other alpine sights.[8]

At the end of that period Price met in Paris Jacques-Philippe Le Bas, and adopted his habit of carrying a sketchbook around with him. At the time he met also the engraver Andrew Lawrence.[9]

Associations

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In London, Price knew both William Hogarth and the young Thomas Gainsborough.[10] Gainsborough married in 1746 Margaret Burr, illegitimate daughter of Henry Somerset, 3rd Duke of Beaufort who was Price's second cousin on his mother's side. Hamilton suggests that the friendship with Price was significant for Gainsborough, while the Beaufort family connection could be "serendipitous", but again Price may have brought the couple together.[11][12]

In 1743 the engraver Joseph Wood published an etching from a Gaspard Dughet painting in Price's collection.[13] A broader use of the "Common Room" term is for a classical culture study group that included Arthur Pond, a Grand Tourist of the 1720s. He published Italian Landscapes from 1741, a series of engravings after Claude Lorrain and Dughet. The Price family were good customers of his, and lent paintings for him to engrave.[14]

At Lewes Price encountered the artist and musician John Malchair who was there to teach music to army officers.[15] Price belonged to the musical circle around John Christopher Smith, which included also Stillingfleet and John Stanley, and wrote the libretto for Smith's oratorio Judith.[16]

At Foxley

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Foxley House, demolished in 1948, lay between Yazor and Mansell Lacy.[17] The house was built by Francis Smith of Warwick and his brother William, over the period 1719 to 1730.[18]

Robert Price (1653–1733), Price's grandfather, had acquired the Foxley estate in 1681, through marriage to a daughter of Robert Rodd.[19] The setting has been described as a "secluded, wooded, horseshoe-shaped valley",[17] and a "wild demesne".[11]

Price resided at Foxley, after his marriage in 1746. Benjamin Stillingfleet was a frequent visitor to a cottage near the house, and took up botany there.[20] Price and Stillingfleet together sought out picturesque landscape, and from 1757 a plan to develop the estate proceeded. The fashioning of the Foxley estate is largely attributed to Robert Price, and secondarily to his son Uvedale.[21] The "irregular but easy paths leading up to viewpoints" mentioned in the Oxford Companion to Gardens are now attributed to Richard, who used a "triangle and plummet" to equalise gradients.[22][23]

Sold by the Price family in 1855, the iconic "picturesque" landscaped estate at Foxley has returned to the normal mixed farming look of the county.[23]

Works

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Robert Price, red chalk drawing A Bridge in a Landscape
  • Illustrations in a pamphlet recording the 1741 alpine expedition and a sequel.[8] It was published as An Account of the Glaciers or Ice Alps in Savoy in two letters (1744), and included a fold-out engraving by François Vivares from a drawing made on the way by Price.[24] The expedition is now considered innovative, an early example of the "picturesque tour".[25] A tradition of British visits to Chamonix was established, for example documented in the 1767 visit of William Benson Earle, and that of John Moore in 1773.[26]
  • Illustrations in Stillingfleet's Observations on Grasses (1762). Seven out of 11 are attributed to Price.[27]
  • An essay comparing German and Italian music, published in John Mainwaring's life of Handel.[28]
  • An almost complete musical setting of the libretto Giuseppe riconosciuto by Pietro Metastasio, and some settings of operatic fragment.[28]

The 1964 paper Some newly discovered drawings by Robert Price of Foxley by F. I. McCarthy announced the attribution to Price of 18 drawings in the collection of the National Library of Wales to Price. They were from a tour of North Wales in 1759, which Price took with Stillingfleet, following their respective interests in landscape and botany. Price paid particular attention to waterfalls.[25] Some of these drawings were later engraved by Isaac Basire.[29]

Robert Price, engraving after a portrait of 1761 by Thomas Gainsborough[30]

Family

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Price married in 1746 Sarah Barrington, daughter of John Barrington, 1st Viscount Barrington. They had seven sons and three daughters.[31]

Notes

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  1. ^ Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York); Baetjer, Katharine (2009). British Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1575-1875. Metropolitan Museum of Art. p. 42. ISBN 978-1-58839-348-7.
  2. ^ Watkins, C.; Cowell, Ben (2012). Uvedale Price (1747-1829): Decoding the Picturesque. Boydell Press. p. 14. ISBN 978-1-84383-708-4.
  3. ^ "Price, Uvedale Tomkyns (1685-1764), of Poston Lodge and Foxley, Yazor, Herefs. History of Parliament Online". www.historyofparliamentonline.org.
  4. ^ a b Watkins, C.; Cowell, Ben (2012). Uvedale Price (1747-1829): Decoding the Picturesque. Boydell Press. p. 15. ISBN 978-1-84383-708-4.
  5. ^ Rowlinson, J. S. (1998). "'Our Common Room in Geneva' and the Early Exploration of the Alps of Savoy". Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London. 52 (2): 221–222. doi:10.1098/rsnr.1998.0047. ISSN 0035-9149. JSTOR 531858. S2CID 143485856.
  6. ^ Kassler, Jamie C. (2001). "Stillingfleet, Benjamin". Grove Music Online. doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.26777.
  7. ^ Chetwynd-Stapylton, Henry Edward (1892). The Chetwynds of Ingestre: Being a History of that Family from a Very Early Date. Longmans, Green and Company. p. 173.
  8. ^ a b Goldsmith, Sarah (2020). "Fire and ice". Fire and ice:: mountains, glaciers and volcanoes. University of London Press. pp. 146–147. ISBN 9781912702213. JSTOR j.ctvk3gp1g.10. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help)
  9. ^ Simon, Robin (2006). "Un rosbif à Paris: Hogarth's visit to Paris in 1743". The British Art Journal. 7 (2): 27. ISSN 1467-2006. JSTOR 41614688.
  10. ^ Hamilton, James (10 August 2017). Gainsborough: A Portrait. Orion. p. 17. ISBN 978-1-4746-0053-8.
  11. ^ a b Hamilton, James (10 August 2017). Gainsborough: A Portrait. Orion. p. 51. ISBN 978-1-4746-0053-8.
  12. ^ Hamilton, James (10 August 2017). Gainsborough: A Portrait. Orion. p. 71. ISBN 978-1-4746-0053-8.
  13. ^ Harris, Ann Sutherland (2009). "Gaspard Dughet's Drawings: Function and Fame". Master Drawings. 47 (3): 304. ISSN 0025-5025. JSTOR 25609745.
  14. ^ Watkins, C.; Cowell, Ben (2012). Uvedale Price (1747-1829): Decoding the Picturesque. Boydell Press. pp. 12–13. ISBN 978-1-84383-708-4.
  15. ^ Oppé, Paul (1943). "John Baptist Malchair of Oxford". The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs. 83 (485): 191–290. ISSN 0951-0788. JSTOR 868783.
  16. ^ McCredie, Andrew D. (1964). "John Christopher Smith as a Dramatic Composer". Music & Letters. 45 (1): 33. doi:10.1093/ml/45.1.22. ISSN 0027-4224. JSTOR 732189.
  17. ^ a b Gardens (en), Parks and (31 December 1742). "Foxley". Parks & Gardens.
  18. ^ Gomme, Andor; Gomme, Austin Harvey (2000). Smith of Warwick: Francis Smith, Architect and Master-builder. Shaun Tyas. p. 159. ISBN 978-1-900289-38-2.
  19. ^ Handley, Stuart. "Price, Robert (1655–1733)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/22763. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  20. ^ Hughes, I. D. "Stillingfleet, Benjamin". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/26525. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  21. ^ "Foxley, Brinsop and Wormsley - 1000880 Historic England". historicengland.org.uk.
  22. ^ Jellicoe, Geoffrey (1986). The Oxford Companion to Gardens. Oxford University Press. p. 200. ISBN 0192861387.
  23. ^ a b Watkins, C.; Cowell, Ben (2012). Uvedale Price (1747-1829): Decoding the Picturesque. Boydell Press. p. 19. ISBN 978-1-84383-708-4.
  24. ^ Hartley, Beryl (1995). "The artist as naturalist and experimenter : landscape painting and science 1740-1850". spiral.imperial.ac.uk. Imperial College London. p. 42. hdl:10044/1/7140.
  25. ^ a b National Library of Wales (1964). Cylchgrawn Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru: The National Library of Wales Journal. Council of the National Library of Wales. pp. 290–291.
  26. ^ de Beer, Gavin Rylands (1953). "William Benson Earle's visit to Chamonix in 1767" (PDF). Alpine Journal: 37.
  27. ^ Hartley, Beryl (1995). "The artist as naturalist and experimenter : landscape painting and science 1740-1850". spiral.imperial.ac.uk. Imperial College London. p. 46. hdl:10044/1/7140.
  28. ^ a b Stillingfleet, Benjamin (1811). Literary Life and Select Works of Benjamin Stillingfleet: Several of which Have Never Before Been Published. Illustrated with Plates. Longman, Hurst, Rees. p. 172.
  29. ^ Watkins, C.; Cowell, Ben (2012). Uvedale Price (1747-1829): Decoding the Picturesque. Boydell Press. p. 18. ISBN 978-1-84383-708-4.
  30. ^ Watkins, C.; Cowell, Ben (2012). Uvedale Price (1747-1829): Decoding the Picturesque. Boydell Press. p. 23. ISBN 978-1-84383-708-4.
  31. ^ Debrett, John (1840). The Baronetage of England, revised, corrected and continued by G.W. Collen. p. 452.
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