ENGLISH SCHOOL, 19TH CENTURY; PORTRAIT OF JOHN HARVEY ESQUIRE, AGED 23, CIRCA 1838

• Lot Sold $11,000 (Hammer Price)
• $13,200 (Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium)

oil on canvas; 66 BY 55CM; This lively sporting portrait by an unknown British artist depicts the young John Harvey (1815-1879), Lord of the Manor of Ickwell Bury, Northill, Bedfordshire. The Harveys held the estate from the 17th to the 20th centuries; the manor house in the background was built by an ancestral John Harvey in 1683. In later life the sitter was distinguished as a yachtsman (and something of a hero of the British-Egyptian conflict over Syria in 1840), a philanthropist (he worked to improve conditions in Victorian lunatic asylums) and as Lord High Sheriff of Bedfordshire. His obituary in The Times (7 April 1879) described him as ‘the model of an English country gentleman. In public life as a Magistrate and chairman of the Quarter Sessions, Mr Harvey's career was one of the highest usefulness and influence, and it will be difficult, if not impossible, to replace him.’ A memorial lynch-gate designed by the architect Sir Arthur Blomfield was erected at Harvey’s local parish church, St Mary the Virgin, Northill