BIB_ID
414665
Accession number
MA 1581.211
Creator
Wilkie, David, Sir, 1785-1841.
Display Date
London, England, 1818 January 19.
Credit line
Purchased from Benjamin Ifor Evans, 1959.
Description
1 item (3 pages, with address) ; 22.6 x 18.9 cm
Notes
This letter is from a large collection of letters written to Sir George Howland Beaumont (1753-1827) and Lady Margaret Willes Beaumont (1758-1829) of Coleorton Hall and to other members of the Beaumont family. See collection-level record for more information (MA 1581.1-297).
This letter formerly identified as MA 1581 (Wilkie) 18.
Address panel with postmarks and fragments of a seal to "Sir George Beaumont Bart. / Coleorton / Ashby de la Zouch / Leicestershire."
This letter formerly identified as MA 1581 (Wilkie) 18.
Address panel with postmarks and fragments of a seal to "Sir George Beaumont Bart. / Coleorton / Ashby de la Zouch / Leicestershire."
Provenance
Purchased as a gift of the Fellows from Benjamin Ifor Evans, 1954.
Summary
Thanking him for the gift of a hare and regretting that he was unable to stop by for a visit on his way home from Scotland; commenting on the beauty of Scotland; saying "Besides the romantic scenes with which it abounds it has subjects of interest that do not in the same degree I think belong to any part of England. Every district presents some memorials of the past from its being the scene of some remarkable event of history or fiction. The people have also a disposition to preserve these traditions which does not I think exist in anything like the same degree among the common people in the South and of which the multitude of these traditions is the proof & the consequence;" relating news of artists in London; saying "Sir Tho's Lawrence has about completed his equestrian portrait of the Duke of Wellington. This I have seen & think it a happy effort. He is dressed in a plain blue coat & a large cloak of the same colour over it. It is the dress he wore at Waterloo & not being a regimental dress it has a very uncommon tho' inherently military look about it. It is one of those images of the Duke that is likely to supplant every other & I should not be surprized if it were to become as common throughout the country as Sir Joshua's Marquis of Granby. It is rather a dark picture and I wish it had had something of a quality which has almost gone of out fashion in the present day. I mean tone in the colouring;" relating news that Wordsworth and his wife visited him on their way to Coleorton; expressing his hope that Sir George is preparing a picture for the Exhibition; asking to be remembered to Lady Beaumont.
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