(1757 - 1833), antiquary and miscellaneous writer, e. s. of Anthony Aufrere of Hoveton St Peter, Norf.; m. 1791 Marianna Lockhart; ed. The Lockhart Papers [1817]; d. Pisa.
1785 - 91 Pisa (by 25 Feb. 1785), Florence, Rome (by May), Naples (1785), Florence (by 7 Jan. 1786) [Geneva, summer 1786] Venice (8 May 1787), Rome; Pisa (by 19 Feb. 1791) [Heidelburg 1792; Mannheim 1793]
[1815 - 33 Tuscany]
Aufrere left Norfolk for the Continent early in 1785 'in innumerable distresses and difficulties', his debts having 'exceeded all Reason', and he was to spend the rest of his life in exile.1 The details of his itinerary in Italy are not clear, but by February 1785 he had met the Rev. William Gunn in Pisa and they visited Florence together. Gunn introduced him in Pisa to Mr and Mrs Minnifie, Mr and Mrs Mallock and General James Lockhart and his daughter Marianna, and urged him to study Italian and keep a journal. Gunn returned to England that autumn but Aufrere continued to correspond with him, obtaining books and prints for him, sending him scholarly pages from his journal, and passing on the gossip of Tuscany. Aufrere appears to have remained based in Tuscany, except for brief excursions to Naples, where he was the 'Cavalier' to a 'Duchessa E...' (before January 1786), to Geneva in the summer of 1786, and to Venice on 8 May 1787.2
By the time Gunn returned to the Continent in 1792 Aufrere had married Marianna Lockhart in Pisa (19 February 1791) and was settled in Heidelberg, whence he offered much advice on travel and sight-seeing, revealing something of his own travels. He frequently mentioned paintings not to be missed in various towns: Genoa, Turin, Verona, Vicenza, Padua (Guido, St John in the Desert), Venice, Ferrara, Cento (some fine things by Guercino), Pesaro, Fano, and the Pistoia and Lucca route to Pisa from Florence, 'one of the most beautiful routes in Italy'. In Rome he recommended Gunn to Lady and Miss Cornelia Knight, and he also mentioned Flaxman (who first arrived in Rome in December 1787) and his drawings, which he thought in 'grand and masterly style, full of fire and grace, and wholly after the Greek manner. I mean the early simple style ... I make no doubt of his executing them with much purity and elegant simplicity'. On his return to England Gunn met the Aufreres in Mannheim in September 1793. In 1795 Aufrere published a translation from the German Travels through the Kingdom of Sicily by Salis Marschlins (first published in Leipzig in 1793).
Aufrere returned to Italy after 1815 and continued writing to Gunn with news and gossip concerning paintings and exhibitions in Milan, Pisa and Tuscany. He died in Pisa on 29 November 1833.3
1. See Riviere 1964 and 1965. Moore 1985, 162 - 3. 2. ASV IS 760. 3. Leghorn Inscr., 79.