(1756 - 1834) of Kingston Lacy, Dorset, o. surv. s. of Henry Bankes of Broadchalk, Salisbury (d. 1776); educ. Westminster and Trin. Camb. 1773; m. 1784 Frances Woodley; MP 1780 - 1831; BM Trustee.
1778 - 80 Turin (11 - 12 Dec. 1778), Milan (28 Dec. 1778 - 1 Jan. 1779), Verona, Vicenza, Venice (by 8 Jan. - 23 May), Mantua (1 Jun.), Parma (5 Jun.), Bologna, Rome (28 Jun. - 24 Nov. - ), Naples (1 Dec. 1779 - 5 Mar. 1780), Rome (8 Mar. - 17 Oct.), Florence (19 Oct.), Pisa, Parma, Mantua (4 Nov.)
1782 Rome (Jun. - )
Henry Bankes first went to Italy in 1778 and his tour is described in his cursory diaries and in a number of letters addressed to his mother (Bankes MSS). He had been recommended by Sir John Dick, the former British consul at Leghorn, to John Strange, the British resident at Venice,1 where he had arrived by 8 January 1779. Verona he described as 'Exceedingly Odd - not pretty', and the Teatro Olympico at Vicenza as 'ugly loaded architecture'. In Rome he sat to Batoni; although Bankes did not consider his portraits 'equal to those of Reynolds' (14 Aug. 1779), he would sit, he told his mother (29 Sep.) 'as you have determined on it.' On 24 November he told her that the portrait would be finished 'tomorrow. It is certainly like me but without any sort of taste or good painting'. Batoni was making some alterations to it on 6 May 1780, but on 23 September Bankes announced it had been packed and sent to Ostend; 'I think it but a melancholy cold picture whose only merit is being simple and having nothing offensive' (Clark/Bowron 418; Kingston Lacy). Bankes made no mention of meeting John Soane or Robert Brettingham, whom he nevertheless must have encountered.2 Lord Herbert (later 11th Earl of Pembroke) described Bankes in Rome as a young Englishman 'who has been for some months loosing his time here',3 but Father Thorpe gave him 'an excellent character', noting that Prince Abbondio Rezzonico (to whom Bankes had been recommended by a Dr Shepherd of Cambridge) 'has him every week at the Capitol'.4
Bankes arrived a second time in Rome in June 1782,5 allegedly to see the marchesa Massini, and he made the journey out in just nineteen days.6 From this visit there are letters from him to William Pitt written in July and September (Bankes MSS).
Bankes subsequently wrote A Civil and Constitutional History of Rome [1818].
1. Eg.1970, f.21 (30 Sep. 1778). 2. A. Cleminson, Apollo, 134[1991]:409. 3. Pembroke Papers, 1:263. 4. Thorpe letters MSS (29 Sep. 1779). 5. Add.36493, f.339 (Irvine, 14 Jun. 1782). 6. Bentham jnl.MSS (20 Feb. 1794).