Humphry, Ozias
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- Humphry, Ozias
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(1742 - 1810), painter and miniaturist; studied in Shipley's acad., London, and with Samuel Collins, Bath, 1760 - 2; exh. SA 1765 - 71 and RA 1779 - 83, 1788 - 97; ARA 1779, RA 1791; Ptrt. Painter in Crayons to the King 1788; went blind 1797.
1773 - 7 [dep. England 20 Mar. 1773] Genoa, Leghorn, Florence, Siena, Rome (18 Jun. 1773 - Feb.?1775), Naples (by Mar. for five weeks), Rome, Florence (May - Jul. 1775), Rome, Florence (Sep. - Nov. 1776), Rome ( - Apr. 1777), Loreto, Ancona, Bologna (May), Venice (by 23 May), Verona, Mantua, Parma [England by 9 Aug.]
Following an accident which affected his eyesight and his ability to continue his practice as a miniaturist, Humphry resolved to study oil painting in Italy.1 It was nevertheless as a miniaturist that he was to receive the greatest attention in Florence and Rome. He had been patronised by the Duke of Gloucester who had commissioned from him portraits of the Pope and the Queen of Naples and furnished introductions to Cardinal Albani and Prince Aldobrandini in Rome (HU/1/128-9, 134, 142). Several of Humphry's surviving letters from Italy are addressed to Charles Rainsford, the Duke's equerry.
Humphry travelled out with George Romney who developed a sore throat at Lyons, so that instead of crossing the Alps they sailed from Nice to Genoa. Proceeding through Leghorn and Florence, they arrived at Rome in June 1773.2 Their temperaments being so different, they did not stay together once in Italy; Humphry was socially ambitious and self-assertive ('a gossip and an idler'), while Romney was withdrawn.3 Humphry stayed in the Strada Gregoriana with the artists Alexander Day and John Nevay in 1774; he was in the Strada Felice with Nevay in 1776, and in different rooms on the same street, still with Nevay, in 1777.4 He also became a close friend of Thomas Banks and his wife.
During the summer of 1773 Humphry was ill (hu/1/138) but he had been able to study the Borghese collection due to
Gloucester's recommendations (hu/1/136-7). By January 1774 he was said to be 'applying closely to large portraits'5 and in the course of the year he painted a head of Mrs Banks (priv. coll. 1938). He was also determined to study the works of Raphael and Titian and he held an evening academy in his own apartment at which 'the ablest artists' discussed the copies they were making. In November 1774 he was making a full-size copy of Raphael's Transfiguration (then in the
church of S.Pietro in Montorio) using the scaffolding already erected for William Parry (hu/1/138)6 and his copy of
Titian's Three Graces in the Borghese was, he said, a work 'likely to do me Credit' (hu/1/141).
But his reputation as a miniaturist had preceded him. In May 1774 he was providing miniatures for three snuff-boxes sent by the Duke and Duchess of Cumberland to Milan,7 and he claimed he was 'importuned by the Roman nobility' to have their portraits done in miniature. Before he left Rome the Prince Borghese gave him a gold snuff box for two miniatures he had painted. Meanwhile Humphry had tried to obtain sittings from the Pope (which only Hewetson of British artists had previously succeeded in doing) and declared he would let the Dukes of Gloucester and Dorset have a copy of the
Pope's (miniature?) portrait he was to paint for the Duke of Cumberland (hu/1/140); but Clement XIV became ill and then
died in September 1774 (hu/2/4) before anything had been achieved. The consequent conclave lasted until February 1775 but, through the interest of the Duke of Gloucester and Cardinal Consalvi, Humphry was allowed to continue studying the Raphaels in the Vatican. A letter to Romney from Rome on 13 January 1775 shows that Humphry knew Matthew William Peters and Thomas Jenkins and was also corresponding with John Strange, the British resident in Venice.8
Humphry spent some five weeks in Naples (he was there in late March 1775) where, despite Sir William Hamilton's help
(hu/2/7), he was unable to have Titian's Danae specially placed for copying; the all-powerful minister Tanucci simply would not reply to letters.9 Humphry returned to Rome to find that Cardinals he had previously known were now out of favour with the election of the new Pope, Pius VI, and he resolved to go to Florence. At the time he left Patrick Home was trying, unsuccessfully, to find out how much he wanted for his copy of the Titian in the Borghese (presumably the Three Graces).(10)
In Florence Lord Cowper had obtained permission for Humphry to copy the Raphael Madonna della sedia and the Titian Venus of Urbino. Humphry was recorded copying in the Uffizi (works by Parmigianino, and self-portraits by Masaccio, Annibale Carracci, Guido Reni and Veronese) between May and July 1775; he was frequently accompanied by the young Maria Hadfield who was later to be described as his pupil.(11) In 1775 Humphry painted portraits of the Fawkener brothers
which were acknowledged from England on 18 December 1775 (hu/2/29). On 24 July 1775 Joseph Wright wrote to Humphry who was still in Florence.(12) On 24 March 1776 he was elected to the Accademia del Disegno, Florence,13 but by then he was probably back in Rome.
In June 1776 Sir Harry Fetherstonhaugh wrote to him from Florence seeking a portrait of the Countess of Albany, the Young Pretender's wife, which Humphry duly executed without mentioning his client's name. In September Humphry
wrote a memorandum recalling his surprise that she appeared 'so ordinary & hagged, upon a closer examination' (hu/2/43-5). Humphry declined to paint her husband, the Young Pretender (although there is an engraved portrait of him 'from a Drawing made in Florence in 1776' by Humphry) but, persuaded by his Countess, Humphry presented the Young Pretender with a ring bearing a miniature portrait of Miss Paine (the daughter of James, the architect). In July 1776 he was intending to return to Florence for about a month to finish his copy of the Venus of Urbino and then hasten on to Venice, Turin and England. He was recorded in the Uffizi in September (when he introduced William Hadfield), and he was copying in November.14 But he was back in Rome that month, when Thomas Jones met him,15 and was still there in February and April 1777, occupied with commissions to measure antique statues and to paint the infant son of the Duke of Gloucester.
Humphry was also paying attention to an English lady, Mrs Pioggi, with a (mercenary) view of courting her younger sister when he returned to England. He left Rome, it appears, late in April, travelling with the Pope's courier to Bologna, via Loreto and Ancona; he was anxious to avoid Florence, where he had been asked to paint Lady Cowper. Venice delighted him; he wrote on 23 May 1777 that he had never seen people 'so gay, so dissipated, so contented, and so enviable' as in this 'Merry World of Water'. He visited Verona, Mantua and Parma, before travelling home across the Alps to England
with Mrs Pioggi and her husband. On 9 August Humphry was being congratulated on his safe return home (hu/2/57).
1. Humphry corr. MSS (hu/2/25). Further refs. cited in brackets. Humphry's diary 1772 - 97 and misc.notebks. are Add.22949 - 22951. See also G.C. Williamson, Ozias Humphry, 38,
48 - 70, 289. 2. Hayward List, 15, 25. 3. Romney 1830, 96. 4. AVR sa, S.Andrea delle Fratte. 5. Thorpe letters MSS (15 Jan. 1774). 6. Ibid. (5 Nov. 1774*). 7. Ibid. (25 May 1774).
8. Romney 1830, 110 - 11. 9. ASN e 682. 10. Home letter bk.MSS (3 Jun. 1775). 11. Borroni 1985, 51, 53, 54, 55, 59. T.G. Caulet to his sisters, 14 Nov. 1778 (priv.coll). 12. W. Bemrose, Wright of Derby, 37. See also B. Nicolson, Wright of Derby, 1:11 - 12. 13. Wynne 1990, 537. 14. Borroni 1987, 134, and 1991, 258. 15. Jones Memoirs, 53 (27 Nov. 1776).