We now come to glance at the portraits at Penicuik House which do
not represent members of the Clerk family. Among the earliest of
these, hung in the Dining-room, is a three-quarter-length seated
portrait of Sir Archibald Primrose, Lord Carrington, that ancestor of
the Rosebery family who played an important part in politics during
the Restoration period, who fought under Montrose, was captured at
Philiphaugh, and barely escaped being executed for treason; who was
appointed Lord Clerk Register in 1660, and Lord Justice-General in
1676, presiding, in that office, at the trial in 1678, of Mitchell
for the attempted assassination of Archbishop Sharp; and whose later
years were spent in steady opposition to the administration of the
Duke of Lauderdale. He is styled by Burnet “the subtelist of all Lord
Middletoun’s friends, a man of long and great practice in affairs ...;
a dextrous man of business, he had always expedients ready at every
difficulty.” In the picture he appears in his black, gold-laced robes
as Lord Clerk Register, his right hand resting on the arm of his chair,
the left raised, and his face seen in three-quarters to the right,
with its thin prominent nose drooping at the point, small chin, and
lips rising towards the ends and pursed and dimpled a little at the
corners. A similar picture, but only bust-sized, stated (Catalogue of
Royal Scottish Academy Loan Exhibition, 1863) to be dated 1670, has
been long at Dalmeny, and a copy of it was presented by Lord Rosebery
to the Faculty of Advocates in 1883, and now hangs in the Parliament
House. His Lordship has recently acquired, from the Rothes Collection,
another, a three-quarter length, version of the picture; and we are
informed that there is also a similar-sized version in the possession
of Lord Elphinstone. A portrait of Sir Archibald Primrose appears in
Mr. A. H. Millar’s list of the portraits at Kinnaird Castle, but we
have not examined this work, and cannot say whether it is a repetition
of the present portrait.
Two interesting oil pictures showing Charles, third Duke of
Queensberry, and his celebrated Duchess, hang near the portrait of Lord
Carrington. The Duke, the correspondent of Swift, painted rather dryly
and hardly by Miss Ann Forbes, whose work we have already referred
to, is seen to below the waist, clad in peer’s robes, the figure
turned towards the right. The face, shown in three-quarters, closely
resembles that in the cabinet-sized bust in oils at Ballochmyle, and
in the mezzotint engraved in 1773, by Valentine Green after George
Willison, with the same high cheek-bones, and prominent high-bridged
nose, and the eyes are of a warm brown colour; but the face is older
than in either of the other portraits, grave and worn, and covered with
wrinkles.
The companion portrait of the Duchess, “Prior’s Kitty, ever young,”
the eccentric patroness of Gay, a work by Aikman, recalls in most of
its details her portrait by Charles Jervas, in the National Portrait
Gallery, London. She is shown in three-quarters length, slim, graceful,
and youthful, clad in a coquettish country costume, a dress of greyish
brown, of dainty proportions at the waist, low-breasted, and with short
sleeves that display the well-turned arms, with a small white apron,
and a little close cap set on the head and almost entirely concealing
the dark brown hair. The face, with its blue eyes and fresh delicate
complexion, is drooping a little, turned in three-quarters to the left;
her left hand rests on the edge of a milk-pail, and her right holds
what appears to be a broad round-brimmed hat. The background is a
landscape, with rocks and trees rising behind the lady to the left,
and with a stretch of green meadow to the right—in which, however, no
figures appear, as in the National Portrait Gallery picture,—and a
space of blue sky faintly tinged with red towards the horizon.
We are informed that these three last-named works were acquired at a
sale, about the end of the last century.
Near them hangs a three-quarter-length portrait which forms an
interesting memorial of one of the second Baronet’s most congenial
friendships. It represents that prominent statesman in the days
of Queen Anne and George I., Thomas, eighth Earl of Pembroke,
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland in 1707, a man of great refinement and
varied culture, President of the Royal Society, of which body Baron
Clerk was elected a member in 1728, “an honour”—as he states in
his “History”—“I value much.” Clerk first made his acquaintance
during his student-days at Leyden, when the Earl was acting as First
Plenipotentiary at the Treaty of Ryswick. In his account of that Treaty
in the “History of my Own Times,” Bishop Burnet remarks that “there
was something in his person and manner that created him an universal
respect; for we had no man among us whom all sides loved and honoured
as they did him.” In 1726 Clerk tells us that he corresponded with
Lord Pembroke upon classical and antiquarian subjects; it was then
that the Earl “sent me his Picture which is now among the Ornaments of
Mavisbank,” one of Sir John’s houses; and after he visited London in
the following year, and examined its chief artistic collections, he
records with delight his pilgrimage to his friend’s seat of Wilton, and
his appreciation of the princely gathering of statues, coins, medals,
etc., which he had brought together there, and especially of his great
ancestral treasure, the Van Dyck group of Earl Philip and his family.
The eighth Earl, it may be noticed, died in January 1732-3, not
1702-3, as given in Noble’s “Granger,” or 1722-3, as stated by Chaloner
Smith.
In the portrait he appears in three-quarters length, clad in armour,
with a lace cravat, and a long dark curling wig, the jewel of the
Garter being suspended by its blue ribbon under his right arm. The
figure is turned to the left, but the sallow, shaven face, with its
dark eyes appearing from beneath bushy black eyebrows, looks in
three-quarters to the right. His right hand is raised holding a baton,
behind which is placed a helmet, the left rests on a gold-hilted sword;
and there is a rocky background, disclosing a space of sky and sea with
a ship and boats.
The picture is evidently a version of the portrait of the Earl painted
by William Wissing, mezzotinted by John Smith in a plate to which the
date of 1709 has been assigned, though the painting must have been
executed much earlier, as Wissing died in 1687. The naval background
is stated to be from the brush of “Vandevelde,” having evidently been
introduced by that artist, after the death of the original painter of
the work, at the time when the Earl was appointed Lord High Admiral of
Great Britain and Ireland, a post which he held in 1701, and again in
1708. The younger William Vandevelde must be the artist indicated, as
the elder painter of the same name died in 1693.
Among the other portraits in the Dining-room may be mentioned a fine
three-quarters length of the Earl of Denbigh, by Lely; a vigorous
bust-portrait of the Duke of Norfolk, by Kneller,—the eighth Duke,
as is proved by the robe and collar of the Garter which appear in the
picture; and a copy from the well-known Janssen portrait of Drummond of
Hawthornden, in the possession of the Earl of Home: while the portraits
of Prince Charles Edward and of his wife the Princess Stolberg, known
as the Countess of Albany, though sufficiently indifferent works of
art, possess a certain interest as having been presented to Rosemary
Clerk by Miss Law of Princes Street, Edinburgh, after she had heard the
tale of the White Cockade, as recorded by Lady Clerk herself, in the
postscript to her letter to the Editor of “Blackwood’s Magazine,” which
we have already quoted.