Arthur Devis, who was born in Preston, Lancashire, was one of the principal exponents of the 'conversation-piece', a genre of portraiture which became highly fashionable in England in the 1720s and 1730s. This large-scale conversation-piece of Peregrine Bertie and his siblings has been widely lauded as one of Devis's most ambitious and successful works. In his review of the 1946 exhibition, Ellis Waterhouse wrote that ‘It is as pretty a picture by Devis as you could find and shows the noble family at ease in a landscape’ (op. cit., pp. 151-2). Ralph Edwards was equally lavish in his praise of the work, writing that Devis ‘has invested all these great folk with his gentle poetic sentiment and, as if keyed up by the importance of the occasion, has produced a picture which may well be counted his most considerable achievement’ (op. cit., p. 575).
Ellen D’Oench, who dated the picture to circa 1747-48, considered it to be Devis’ ‘most rococo canvas’, reflecting the artist’s interest in contemporary French painting, and suggested the sophisticated composition with its groups of overlapping figures may have been based on Watteau’s La Conversation, which had been engraved in 1733 (op. cit., 1980, p. 54). Set in a wooded landscape with a lake and distant hills behind the young Duke, his brothers and sisters are elegantly arranged in two groups; the ravishing pinks, blues and yellow of the ladies’ silk dresses are set off by the dark wooded backdrop. Resting nonchalantly against a tree stump, with legs crossed and a gun on his arm, Peregrine’s relaxed pose would become increasingly in vogue in contemporary portraiture and was employed - perhaps most memorably - only a few years later by Gainsborough for his celebrated portrait of Mr and Mrs Andrews (c.1750; London, National Gallery).
Peregrine Bertie, 3rd Duke of Ancaster and Kesteven (1714-1778), was the eldest son of Peregrine Bertie, 2nd Duke of Ancaster and Kesteven (1686-1742) and his wife Jane Brownlow, daughter of Sir John Brownlow, 3rd Bt. On the death of his father in 1742, Peregrine succeeded to the dukedom, as well as the positions of Lord Great Chamberlain and Lord Lieutenant of Lincolnshire, while also being appointed to the Privy Council. He raised a regiment for the King in 1745 and rose to the rank of General in 1772. Bertie belonged to the group of noblemen who formed the Jockey Club in 1750 and served as Master of the Horse to King George III from 1766-78. He was a notable patron of the arts and commissioned numerous portraits of his family for Grimsthorpe from Sir Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Hudson and Andrea Casali. He acquired three pictures from Hogarth’s sale at the latter’s house in Leicester Fields in 1745 and was one of George Stubbs’ most important early patrons at the beginning of the 1760s, soon after the artist moved to London.
Peregrine’s younger brother Albermale (1724-1765), shown immediately to his right, seated on a bank with his eyes cast down, was blinded in his early youth and became a notorious gambler. He was depicted by William Hogarth as the central character in The Cockpit (engraved in 1759), a raucous scene at the Royal Cockpit in Birdcage Walk, St. James’s Park. Brownlow Bertie, 5th Duke of Ancaster and Kesteven (1729-1809), the youngest brother, shown seated on a tree stump in the grouping on the far right of the composition, succeeded to the dukedom following the death of his nephew in 1779. D’Oench (op. cit., 1980) identifies the sisters as Jane (1720-1793), Albinia (1723-1754), Caroline (1727-1774) and Mary (1726-1774).
One of the two sisters shown at the centre of the composition, with their arms interlinked, is presumably Jane, the eldest daughter, who married Major-General Edward Mathew (1729-1805). Their daughter Anne Mathew married the Rev. James Austen, brother of the novelist, Jane Austen. The picture was inherited by Bertie Mathew (1811-1844), after whose death it was acquired by Lady Charlotte Guest, later Lady Charlotte Schreiber (1812-1895). The daughter of General Albemarle Bertie, 9th Earl of Lindsey, Charlotte was one of the most significant women in the history of collecting; her remarkable collection of porcelain was donated to the South Kensington Museum in 1884 as a memorial to her second husband, Charles Schreiber, while her fine collection of fans was given to the British Museum in 1891. For a full account of her picture collecting, see Francis Russell’s two articles in Country Life: ‘An Energetic Victorian..’ (op. cit.); and ‘A Passion for Collecting’, 12 February 1981, pp. 390-391.
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