The Grandchildren of Sir William Heathcote, 3rd Baronet

The 1938 sale catalogue of the heirlooms of the Heathcote family identifies the baby as Sir William Heathcote (1801–1881), fifth Baronet, and the girls as Harriet and Anne Lovell and Ellen Heathcote, who were his first cousins. Harriet (1799–1820) and Anne (1800–1871) were the daughters of Harriet, elder daughter of the third Baronet; she had married Langford Lovell in 1798. Ellen (1803–1883) was the oldest of eight children of the Reverend Samuel Heathcote, third son of the third Baronet. William, the family heir, was the only child of the second son, the Reverend William Heathcote, vicar of Worting in Hampshire. The family house was Hursley Park, also in Hampshire, but according to the dealer’s label on the reverse of the frame, the children were painted in 1801 at Embley, in the same county. The canvas was doubtless commissioned by their grandfather, also Sir William, whose wife, born Frances Thorpe, was co-heir to Embley. Owen exhibited it at the Royal Academy in 1806, the year he was elected an academician.

In 2012, through the good offices of a descendant, the Museum was provided with genealogical details drawn from a family history that had previously been unavailable. Having the life and death dates of all four sitters in hand, it became possible to identify them as Harriet Lovell, kneeling, her sister Anne with their cousin Ellen Heathcote, and William Heathcote to the right. As Ellen, the baby, was born on July 17, 1803, the picture must have been painted in the early autumn, two and a half years before it was exhibited.

The Heathcote pictures were sold off in the 1930s by a distant cousin, a clergyman living in Canada, who had succeeded as the ninth Baronet. Until that time, the family portraits by Dahl, Kneller, Daniel Gardner, Charles Hayter, and Owen, among others, constituted a rather comprehensive record of the appearance of succeeding generations from the late seventeenth century until shortly after 1800. Owen, the most popular of them all, had painted the third Baronet, his wife, seven children, a daughter-in-law, and a granddaughter, Maria, as well as the four grandchildren pictured here. Although Owen was known principally as a portraitist, the Redgraves admired “his subjects of rustic life, elevated both above common life and mere portraiture by some reference to poetry or story" (Richard Redgrave and Samuel Redgrave, A Century of Painters of the English School, 2nd ed., London, 1890, p. 218). The present picture combines the two genres in showing the grandchildren of the baronet in peasant costumes, though the baby has a more formal bonnet. William Heathcote balances a sheaf of wheat on his head, and another sheaf lies on the ground beside him, a reminder of the fruitfulness of autumn and the presence of a young male heir.

Katharine Baetjer 2012

Sir William Heathcote, 3rd Baronet (until d. 1819); by descent to Lieutenant Colonel Sir Gilbert Redvers Heathcote, 8th Baronet, Bighton Wood, Alresford, Hampshire (1924–d. 1937; Heathcote Heirlooms sale, Christie's, London, May 27, 1938, no. 44, as "Portraits of Harriet and Anne, Daughters of Langford Lovell, Esq., with Ellen, daughter of the Rev. Samuel Heathcote, and afterwards wife of William Wyndham, Esq., and Sir William Heathcote, 5th Baronet," for £194.5.0 to Vicars); [Vicars Brothers, London, from 1938]; Josephine Mercy Heathcote Haskell, New York (until d. 1982); Heathcote Art Foundation (1982–86)

London. Royal Academy. May 5–June 21, 1806, no. 242 (as "Portraits of grandchildren of Sir W. Heathcote").

Evelyn D. Heathcote. An Account of Some of the Families Bearing the Name of Heathcote which have Descended out of the County of Derby. Winchester, 1899, ill. opp. p. 142, as "Gleaners"; identifies the children as Harriet and Anne Lovell with Ellen Heathcote, and William Heathcote, fifth Baronet, at right; provides biographical details.

Connoisseur 102 (October 1938), p. xvii, ill., as with Vicars.

E. Bénézit. Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs et graveurs. new ed. Paris, 1976, vol. 8, p. 68.

Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 202, ill.

Katharine Baetjer. British Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1575–1875. New York, 2009, pp. 222–23, no. 109, ill. (color).

A. Cassandra Albinson in Thomas Lawrence: Regency Power & Brilliance. Ed. A. Cassandra Albinson et al. Exh. cat., National Portrait Gallery, London. New Haven, 2010, p. 207, cat. 33.1 (color).