(?1691 - 1762), diplomat and statesman, of Eastbury, Dorset, 1st surv. s. of Col. Jeremiah Bubb; educ. Winchester and Exeter Oxf. 1707; L.Inn 1711; m. c.1725 Katherine Beaghan [Behan] (d. 1756); took name of Dodington 1718; Dilettanti 1742; env. to Spain 1715 - 17; MP 1715 - 61; cr. B. Melcombe 1761.
by 1710
1713 Venice (by 6 Jan.), Padua (27 Jan.)
1732 Florence ( - 4 Aug.), Rome (by 10 Aug. - Sep.), Venice ( - 26 Sep.)
As George Bubb, Dodington apparently visited Italy before 1710, when the Duchess of Marlborough addressed him: 'Young man, you come from Italy. They tell me of a new invention there called caricatura drawing'.1 He is said to have made a grand tour in 1711 - 132 and was recorded in Venice3 and Padua4 in January 1713.
Dodington returned to Italy for a brief but better-documented visit in 1732, with his wife and her sister (who later married the Italian bookseller and publisher Leonardo Venturini). The architect Roger Morris may also have been with him. Elizeus Burges, the British resident in Venice, wrote that Dodington 'came out of England about ye middle of June last and will certainly be back again by ye middle of October; so that he will have seen all that is worth seeing in France and Italy in four months time, & have spent four weeks of it at Rome, where there are more things worth observation than in any other City of Europe'.5 On 4 August Dodington left Florence, where his party had lodged with the British resident, Francis Colman.6 By 10 August he was in Rome 'purchasing fine pictures and rich furniture for his fine seat in Dorsetshire' [Eastbury, demolished in 1775].7 He met Stosch and Cardinal Albani, who became a particular friend, introducing to him the painter Katherine Read and the sculptor Prince Hoare and subsequently acting as his antiquarian agent; Dodington in turn later recommended to him the sculptor Joseph Wilton.8 By the end of September, having stopped in Venice, Dodington was on his way home.5
After his return Dodington was active as a collector, both for Frederick, Prince of Wales, and for his own extravagant Great House ('La Trappe') in Hammersmith. He had bought in Italy two seventeen-foot columns of Sicilian jasper for the gallery, the floor of which, of 'jaune de Siene, verd de Genes et de blanc de Cararre', was constructed in Florence under the supervision of Horace Mann.9 In May - August 1750 Dodington asked Cardinal Albani to find him 'Four statues, not mutilated ... busts and vases', works of merit and fine workmanship for the gallery and anything else 'worthy of the attention of a great Prince' [Frederick, Prince of Wales]. Dodington also commissioned Horace Mann to buy statues for the Prince, and in 1752 Mann shipped thirteen statues by Francavilla to England, four of which remain at Windsor.(10)
1. G. Paston, Social Caricature in the 18th cent., [1905], 2. 2. Commons 1, 1:500. 3. SP 99/60, f.4 (Cole, 6 Jan. 1713). 4. Brown 1415. 5. SP 99/63, f.212 (26 Sep. 1732). 6. SP 98/33 (Colman, 5 Aug. 1713). Wal.Corr., 18:105, 392. 7. London Evening Post, 8 - 10 Aug. 1732. For Eastbury, see R. Cumberland, Memoirs, 1:140 - 2. 8. Lewis 1961, 94, 155 - 61. 9. See C. Hornsby, Apollo, 134[1991]:410 - 14. 10. A.H. Scott-Elliot, Burl.Mag., 98[1956]:77 - 84.