Fagan, Robert
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- Fagan, Robert
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(1761 - 1816), painter, dealer, archaeologist and diplomat; RA Schools 1781; exh. RA 1793, 1812, 1815, 1816 (from Rome); cons.-gen. Sicily and Malta 1809; d. Rome.
1781 - 2 Rome (by 22 Dec. 1781 - before Jun. 1782)
1784 - 1814 [Paris, 1783] Rome (by 6 Mar. 1784 - 92), Naples (1792 - 3), Rome (1793 - 7), Naples (by Jun. 1797), Rome (1797 - 9), Naples (1800 - 7), Palermo (1807 - 13), Rome (1814) [England 1815]
c.1815 - 16 Rome (by Jan. 1816 - d. 26 Aug.)
Robert Fagan's first visit to Italy was brief. 'We have got two new Students, Grignion & Fagan over' wrote James Irvine from Rome on 22 December 1781, but on 14 June 1782 the same writer reported that Fagan had been obliged to return to England.1
In 1784 Fagan returned to Italy where he was to spend the rest of his eventful and somewhat dissolute life, dividing his activities between painting, dealing, archaeology and ultimately diplomacy. He arrived in Italy from Paris early in February2 and by 6 March 1784 he was living in the Casa di Trinit? dei Monti at Rome with a Mr Robinson.3 He was to remain based in Rome; in 1790 he was listed as a history painter at the 'Strada del Babuino over the coach maker' and in 1793 as a portrait painter at the Palazzo del Babuino. In April 1794, with the other British artists in Rome, he signed the letter of thanks to Prince Augustus (see Rome Lists).
During his early years in Rome, Fagan was supported by an anonymous 'Trustee' who allowed him £;100 a year; Irvine told Cumberland of this, adding that Fagan would not be able to support himself if he continued his existing life-style and kept a 'showy' horse.4 The Trustee may have been Edward Poore of Salisbury who, six years later on 12 February 1790, wrote: 'I am very well pleased with your account of Fagan and with his account of himself; I directly answered his draft upon Herries [banker] ... I have no doubt he will do very well in life, being an active, lively man, formed for business and for the world: I wish tho' you wd. persuade him to finish all he has undertaken for me of the Domenichino's before he goes to Titian, which tho' very useful for his study of colours is not equally agreeable to my taste in design ... Fagan's brains are in the right place: he is disposed to live in this world ... and therefore ... will I dare say come over to England and get rich by the trade of painting, instead of starring in visionary refinement upon the profession of it'.5
Fagan stayed on in Italy, twice marrying young Italian women. At a time when Flaxman was describing him as having been 'very extravagant & embarrased [in] his circumstances',6 Fagan married on 12 April 1790 Anna Maria Aloisia Rosa Ferri, the seventeen-year-old daughter of Pietro Ferri, an employee of Cardinal Rezzonico. The couple settled in the Via Babuino7 and their daughter Estina was born on 15 November 1792. According to Lady Knight, Fagan again changed his religion to marry her ('the daughter of C. Ritson's valet de chambre'); an Irish Catholic, he had already changed his faith in England. Lady Knight also recounted how Fagan refused to show her and her daughter his pictures since 'we were enemies of the Revolution' and, not surprisingly, characterised him as 'a very worthless fellow'.8 Fagan's first wife died on 25 August 1800 and within six weeks he had married Maria Ludovica Francesca Geltrude Flanjani, who appears half-draped in his self-portrait of c.1803 (priv. coll., Ireland). They settled in the Palazzo Spada on the Corso,7 and by 20 March, 1803 they were living in the Piazza Colonna.9 Their first child, Emilia, was born c.1806 and a second, George, some time after 1812.(10)
Fagan produced a considerable number of portraits in the neoclassical style for grand tourists, his sitters including Lady Augusta Murray, Lady Clifford, George Wright, Sophia Cotton (later Lady Mainwaring), Lady Webster, and Sir Corbet Corbet and his wife. He also executed seventeen painted trompe l'oeil grisailles after the antique which were bought by the 2nd Lord Berwick for Attingham. Besides practising as a painter, Fagan set up as a dealer in antiquities and pictures, his patrons including the 4th Earl of Bristol. He profited considerably from the traffic in major works of art sold by Italian families during the French occupation of Rome, and in 1798 - 9, with Charles Grignion, he succeeded in smuggling the Altieri Claudes out of Italy.(10) A good deal of Fagan's personal collection, valued at £;3,000, became impounded during this period. In May 1800 he exported fifty-five pictures for George Cumberland and mentioned buying other 'capital pictures' from Roman palazzi.(10) He had already applied for a licence on 15 March 1800 to ship forty-four paintings and on 25 July 1800 six cases of works of art, mostly of sculpture, which were destined for Prince Augustus and Thomas Hope. (Fagan was to make further applications to export works of art between September 1806 and October 1807).
But Fagan's greatest achievements in Italy were made as an archaeologist,11 a field in which he enjoyed the particular favour of Prince Augustus. He worked at Gabii (1792) with Gavin Hamilton, at Campo Iemini (1794 - 6) with Prince Augustus and Sir Corbet Corbet; and at Ostia, where he discovered the first mithraeum c.1794, Tor Boaccina (1797), Tyndaris (1808) and Selinunte in Sicily (1809 - 10).(12) A colossal mask of Neptune excavated at Hadrian's Villa, which was in the estate of Fagan, was sold to the Vatican in 1817.
Fagan's later years in Sicily and Italy fall outside the scope of this Dictionary, but he was appointed consul general for Sicily and Malta in 1809 and resided at Palermo.(13) In that year he painted Lady Acton and her children, which he signed 'Painted by Robert Fagan His Britannic Majesty's Consul Governor for Sicily 1809'. He became on good terms with Queen Maria Carolina of Naples, but by 1814 he was losing favour with the British government due, at least in part, to his continuing activities as a dealer and to his increasing financial difficulties. In 1815 he made a brief visit to London; by January 1816 he had returned to Rome, where, on 26 August he took his own life.
1. Add.36493, ff.258, 339 (22 Dec. 1781, 14 Jun. 1782). 2. Add. 36494, f.252 (Fagan, 2 Feb. 1784). 3. AVR SA, S.Andrea delle Fratte. 4. Add.36494, f.283 (Irvine, 6 Mar. 1784). 5. Add.36496, f.172. 6. Add.39780, f.47 (26 Jan.[1790]). 7. AVR SA, S.Maria del Popolo. 8. Knight Letters, 206 - 7. 9. Knowles, Fuseli, 1:284. 10. See R. Trevelyan, Apollo, 96[1972]:299 - 307. 11. Michaelis, 82. 12. See Trevelyan (at n10) and I. Bignamini, Burl.Mag., 136[1994]:548 - 52. 13. See R. Trevelyan, Kalos, Nov. - Dec. 1993, 6 - 15. Fagan MSS, Add.36730, ff.1 - 59.
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