(1760 - 1838) of Trinton Hall, Suff., s. of Beeston Long of Carshalton, Surr.; Emmanuel Camb. 1779; I.Temple 1779; MP 1789 - 1826; FRS 1792; m. 1793 Amelia Hume; cr. B. Farnborough 1826; BM Trustee 1812, NG Trustee 1824.
1786 - 8 [Geneva Aug. 1786] Florence, Rome (Dec. 1786), Naples (by 18 Jan. 1787), Rome (Feb. - Apr.) [Switzerland] Turin (by 4 Nov.), Florence (by 20 Nov. 1787), Venice (by 2 Feb. 1788)
In August 1786 Charles Long was in Switzerland with George Cumberland, to whom he subsequently wrote a number of letters from Italy.1 By December he had been to Florence, where he had met the painter Henry Tresham, and had reached Rome. He was following a course of antiquities - '4 or 5 hours' every morning - given by James Byres, 'a man of real feeling'; he had been invited to many parties by the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester and had met the artists Grignion and Durno and had seen Tresham again (23 Dec.). He had also attended the funeral of James Six.2 Long then interrupted his course with Byres to attend the Carnival in Naples, where he had arrived by 18 January 1787.3
He was back in Rome early in February, and by the end of his antiquarian course he was describing Byres as one of the most irritable [men] I ever met with' (18 Mar.). Long bought three pictures (unspecified) in Rome (18 Mar.) and he continued to mix freely with British artists (adding Marchant and Deare to his acquaintance); he was perceptive of their work, being himself an amateur artist (5 Apr.). In March he had gone off to draw 'like a madman' in Tivoli - 'the fit is just now come on' (18 Mar.). On 22 April he wrote that he intended to spend the summer in Switzerland. He next wrote from Turin on 4 November (Cumberland being then in Rome) asking about some commissions he had left with Marchant, 'a head' and some 'castes of the best heads'.4 On 20 November he was in Florence and on 2 February 1788 in Venice, admiring an exhibition of sculpture and antiquities belonging to Count Fries, in which 'Canova's Theseus [now VAM] I take to be the best thing he has bought'. This was the last of his letters; Long was elected to Parliament on 13 January 1789.
1. Add.36495 (dates indicated in text above). 2. GM, 57[1787]:90. 3. World Fashionable Advertiser, 5 Feb. 1787. 4. Marchant 1987, 60 - 1 (no.85).