Bouverie, John
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- Bouverie, John
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(c.1722 - 50) of East Betchworth, s. of Sir Christopher Des Bouveries (d. 1732/3) of London; New Coll. Oxf. 1737; cos. of Sir Jacob Bouverie (who was cr. Vct. Folkestone); first Pres. SA.
1741 - 2 [dep. London 1 Oct. 1740] Genoa ( - 22 Apr. 1741), Milan (by 7 May), Venice (by 18 - 31 May), Bologna (4 - 8 Jun.), Florence (10 Jun.), Pisa (by 18 Jun.), Florence (19 Jun. - Oct.), Rome (by 23 Oct. 1741 - 16 Feb. 1742), Naples (by 13 Mar.), Rome (by 23 Mar. - Apr.), Bologna (late Apr. - 10 May), Parma, Piacenza [London by 28 Jun.]
1745 - 6 Rome (Mar. 1745) [Naples] Rome ( - 5 May), Loreto, Ancona, Bologna (12 - 19 May), Venice (late May - 4 Jun.), Florence (Jul.), Rome (by 24 Oct. 1745 - Mar. 1746) [London by 22 Jan. 1747]
1749 - 50 [dep. London 28 May 1749] Florence (by 12 Aug. - early Nov.), Rome (14 Nov. 1749 - 17 Mar. 1750), Naples (Mar. - May) [d. Turkey Sep.]
A remarkable connoisseur, collector and archaeologist, John Bouverie made three visits to Italy. He had already inherited a considerable fortune from his father and older brother when he made his first tour in 1741, at the age of eighteen, with the knowledgeable John Clephane as his governor.1 They were in Genoa in April and in Venice for most of May. On 10 June they arrived in Florence with Joseph Trapp and Samuel Fuller. Horace Mann was their host, but he did not enjoy their presence. They were a 'silent company' and knew 'no language'; Bouverie was paying all the expenses.2 On 17 June they visited Pisa, but returned to stay in Mann's guest house, the Casa Ambrogi, until October.3
Though he may have stayed silent, Bouverie's character was emerging. He was regularly receiving from London copies of Common Sense, the opposition journal,4 and he began to acquire drawings. From Ignazio Hugford he bought an album by Holbein (now BMPL as 'Clouet') and, very probably at that time, a group of drawings by the seventeenth-century Florentine painter Domenico Gabbiani which included copies of old masters; and from the Abb? Bondocci he bought an album by Guercino, an artist Bouverie came to admire greatly. Bouverie and his party went on from Florence to Rome where they stayed from late October to February 1742, and they spent several weeks in Naples in March. They left in mid-March to begin their return journey through Rome, Bologna, Parma and Piacenza, and they were back in London by 28 June (see also John Clephane).
Bouverie returned to Italy with Richard Phelps in 1745 (during the War of the Austrian Succession and in the year of the Jacobite rising in Scotland). They were presumably in Rome in March when they obtained passports for Naples through the Pretender's adviser, James Murray.5 On 5 May they left Rome with the young painter James Russel and James Dawkins, travelling through Loreto and Ancona to Bologna, where they spent a week from 12 May. Bouverie came to know Bologna well; although further visits are not recorded, he had twice stayed there on his previous Italian visit. Many of his Guercino drawings were said to have been acquired from Francesco Forni, a dealer in Bologna, and in his will he left an annuity to one Signora Teresa Tacconio of Bologna, daughter of Pietro Baratti 'of the same town'. From Bologna the party went on to pass Ascension in Venice, where Dawkins stayed while Bouverie, Phelps and Russel left on 4 June to return to Florence. Russel observed that these gentlemen 'did not travel merely to amuse, but to improve themselves' and he had benefitted from their 'free, easy and ingenious conversation'.6 On 24 October Bouverie and Phelps were dining with Clephane and Joseph Leeson in Rome.7
Bouverie continued to acquire. He commissioned two views of Rome from Joseph Vernet in October8 and the Roman antiquarian Domenico Bracci later asserted that he had helped Bouverie with the greater part of his collections of prints, drawings, engravings, cameos and medals.9 Bouverie's collecting was probably facilitated by his Jacobite sympathies. On 4 January 1746 Mann wrote that Bouverie 'does not act publicly, as to the Pretender, but has all his people constantly to dine with him'; with his three companions, Rowland Holt, Phelps and John Monro, he had waited on the Pretender to compliment him on his son's birthday and he dined with the Pretender at the New Year.(10) In March 1746 Bouverie was suspected of leaving Rome to go to Vienna on a mission for the Pretender.(11) He was in London by January 1747, and in May Mann alleged that he had had to give bail for his loyal behaviour on his return.(12)
Bouverie set out from London for the last time on 28 May 1749 'proposing to be at Rome in about six weeks'; by 12 August he had reached Florence and on 14 November he was in Rome.(13) He spent four months there, adding to his collections (he left a statue of Apollo with James Russel14 and ordered six more paintings from Joseph Vernet in January 175015), and preparing for his expedition with James Dawkins and Robert Wood to 'the most remarkable places of antiquity on the coast of the Mediterranean'. Dawkins and Bouverie left Rome on 17 March and with Wood sailed from Naples in May. Before they sailed Bouverie made his will on 4 May, 'mindful of the Accidents which may attend me on the Voyage'. On 19 September Bouverie died at Guzel Hissar in Turkey and he was buried at Smyrna. Wood paid tribute to him in the Ruins of Palmyra [1753], describing Bouverie's collection of 'drawings, medals, intaglio's and cameo's' as proof of 'the correctness of his taste'.
1. See N. Turner, Burl.Mag., 136[1994]:90 - 9. 2. Wal. Corr., 17:63 n39, 70, 116. 3. Ibid., 17:67, 146, 154. 4. Ibid., 83. 5. Lewis 1961, 25. 6. Russel, Letters, 1:248 - 56 (13 Jul. 1745). 7. Rose of Kilravock MSS, GD 125/23/10. 8. Lagrange, 324 - 5. 9. HMC Hastings, 3:91. 10. Wal.Corr. 19:191 and n3, 196. 11. Lewis 1961, 134. 12. Wal.Corr., 19:400. 13. Add.41169, ff.23, 34, 39 (W. Russel, 8 Jun. 1749; J. Russel, 12 Aug., 18 Nov. 1749). 14. Add.41169, f.53 (W. Russel, 24 Oct. 1751). 15. Lagrange, 331 - 2.