(1725 - 74), e. s. of Richard Clive of Styche, Salop; educ. Merchant Taylors'; ensign EICo 1747, lt. 1749; m. 1753 Margaret Maskelyne; MP 1754 - 5, 1761 - 74; lt.-gov. Fort St David 1756; gov. Bengal 1758 - 60; cr. B. Clive of Plassey [I] 1762; gov. and c.-in-c. Bengal 1764 - 7; KB 1764; FRS 1768.
1773 - 4 [Geneva, Sep. 1773] Milan (Dec. 1773), Florence (2 - 5 Jan. 1774), Rome ( - 12 Jan.), Naples (by 18 Jan. - c.17 Feb.), Rome (19 Feb. - 20 Mar.), Bologna, Venice [Geneva, England 16 May]
Clive of India visited Italy in the last year of his life, when he was suffering from nervous depression and physical pain. He sought both a kinder climate and an opportunity to increase his collection of pictures, and he travelled with Thomas Kelsall and Anselm Beaumont, colleagues from India, with William Patoun as his artistic adviser.1 He spent two days in Milan and four in Florence,2 where Zoffany met him and sarcastically remarked that Clive would have liked to have 'a picture similar to what I am now painting of the Tribuna, but poor man, he could not go to the expense'.3 Clive arrived in Rome in January 1774; in the few days he passed there before proceeding to Naples, he spent £;500 with Thomas Jenkins4 on an Assumption by Tintoretto (sold in 1929).5 The climate of Naples did not benefit him as he had hoped, and after little more than a month he returned to Rome late in February. William Hamilton wondered whether any climate could help him, observing that Clive's disorder seemed 'to be mostly of the spirits'.6
On his return to Rome, Clive stayed in the Casa Guarnieri.7 He declared 'he would only purchase the works of the Old Masters, and leave his son to encourage the moderns', and only Jenkins, who had been 'busy polishing up his virtu to engage him on his return', benefitted from his attention. According to Father Thorpe, Jenkins received £;1500 for a picture by Sassoferrato not worth £;500, a deal which was seen by some as repayment for the magnificent manner in which he had introduced Clive to the Pope. Matthew Peters was commissioned to copy Barocci's Madonna della Scudella,8 but that appears to have been the limit of his patronage. Gavin Hamilton succeeded in selling him an antique statue of a boy with a bird which he had recently excavated at Monte Cagnolo.9 By the end of April Clive had 'gone off & bilked the dealers', as Father Thorpe expressed it. A few months after returning to England he took his own life. Some of his Roman purchases were sold in 1778 (Christie's, 13 - 14 Feb.).
1. Whitley, 1:196, 296. Thorpe letters mss (12 Mar. 1774, 20 Dec. 1775). 2. Coke Letters, 4:287. 3. Ibid., 296. Whitley, 1:296. 4. Thorpe letters MSS (12, 15 Jan. 1774). 5. M. Bence Jones, CL, 25 Nov. 1971, 1448. 6. SP 93/29 (Hamilton, 18 Jan., 23 Feb. 1774). 7. See Thorpe letters MSS (6, 26, Feb., 19 Mar., 2 Apr., 4 Jun. 1774). 8. Thorpe letters MSS (21 Dec. 1774*). 9. Hamilton 1901, 320.