The Property of a Nobleman

ARTHUR DEVIS
1712-1787

A conversation piece, traditionally, but erroneously, identified as “The Cross family in the park of Shudy Camps Hall, Cambridgeshire”

Signed and dated 175(9) lower right
Oil on canvas
Unframed: 40 x 50 in / 100 x 125 cm., and contained in a superb contemporary mid-Georgian carved, pierced and gilded frame (frame size 50 x 60 inches)

Provenance::By family descent from the sitters;...............with Arthur Tooth and Company, 1948; private collection London

Literature: Sydney H. Paviere, 'The Devis Family of Painters”, 1950, p. 40, Catalogue No. 28. and illustrated as plate 29, as The Cross family of Shudy (?) Camp Park, Cambridgeshire”
“Polite Society: Portraits of the English Country Gentleman and his Family by Arthur Devis”: Catalogue of the exhibition at the Harris Art Gallery, Preston, and the National Portrait Gallery, page 61 as “The Cross Family, of Shudy Camps Park, Cambridgeshire”
Ellen G. D'Oench, 'Arthur Devis 1712-1787, Master of the Georgian Conversation Piece', Yale University, Ph.D dissertation, 1979,
Ellen G. D'Oench, 'The Conversation Piece: Arthur Devis and his Contemporaries', 1980, p.82, catalogue no.42 as “The Cross Family, of Shudy Camps Park, Cambridgeshire”

Arthur Devis was a leading figure of the group of English artists who painted small-scale intimate portraits and conversation pieces in the eighteenth century. His highly finished and technically accomplished paintings are redolent of a refined Georgian age and each portrait sets its sitter in his or her social context. In the late 1730's, as Devis' portrait practice expanded, he moved from his native Preston in Lancashire to work and settle in London and was well established there by 1742. Appreciated and sought after by his largely upper middle-class sitters; Devis also achieved respect and recognition in the artists' community in London. He exhibited at the Free Society of Artists between 1761 and 1780 and became its President in 1768.

Devis' career blossomed through the 1740's and, as well as his conversation pieces, he specialised in small-scale portraits of single figures. These sitters were both 'New Men' of the Georgian age who had made their fortunes through commerce, trade or banking; and the prosperous gentry in their country house settings.

Devis' portraits are distinctive with his very clean and neat style. His observations on posture and property make his work a remarkable record of mid-eighteenth century genteel life and he serves as an astute commentator of his time.

The present painting seems first to be documented as the Cross family when it was in the possession of the dealers Arthur Tooth & co. just after the second world war (see above, “provenance”); the identity of the house seems to have at that point to have been doubtful as evidenced by the entry in Paviere's pioneering monograph of 1950, where the house is identified as “Shudy (?)” in the catalogue. Shudy Camps Hall in Cambridgeshire is a red-brick house of nine bays and two storeys built in 1702 by Sir Marmaduke Dayrell, and which still stands. It was the home of the Dayrell family until the late 19th century when it was sold. By 1980, the doubt expressed by Paviere had been dropped, and the traditional identification of the house had been univerally accepted by scholrs.

However, recent research has shown that there was (a) no family of gentry or of commercial distinction of the name of Cross in Cambridgeshire in the 18th century; (b) no family of Cross inter-married with the Dayrell family of Shudy Camps since at least 1700 and (b) that the conformation of the house depicted in the painting bears no resemblance to the red-brick house which is Shudy . It is therefore clear that this is neither a group portrait of a Cambridgeshire family called Cross, nor is the house Shudy Camps. Hence it is highly unlikely to be a portrait of the Dayrell family whose seat it was for 200 years.

The obvious question therefore arises how this mis-identification has arisen, since at present the traditional title is clearly fiction. An exhaustive search of county families in the 18th century reveals, rather surprisingly, only one appropriate family who were sufficiently prosperous to be possible candidates for a portrait by Devis.

This is the family of Cross, (or, occasionally, Crosse) formerly of Myerscough Hall and Wyke Hall, Lancashire various branches of which “held considerable property” in that county from at least the 17th century. What is perhaps most telling is that this family were landowners just outside Preston, which is, of course, Devis's home town and of whose citizens he painted numerous portraits over a period of thirty or more years. The Crosses, like the Devises, were members of the Preston Guild, the council which ran the town. Of the various houses which were owned by the family, none seems to comply with the building illustrated in the present painting. The Cross family of Red Scar, near Preston, are unlikely to be the sitters, since their house was a black-and-white half-timbered manor and the senior branch of the family had no small children in 1759, the date of the painting.

The Cross(e) family of Shaw Hill were a family of considerable antiquity and standing in south Lancashire from at least the 17th century, and lived at Crosse Hall, Chorley. This is certainly not the house in the present painting (it was built of rusticated millstone grit, not stucco or brick), but they did have an appropriate candidate for the sitters in the present painting. Thomas Cross of Crosse Hall and Shaw Hill was baptised on 23rd September 1722 and would thus have been about 37 at the date of the painting, which seems to concur with the apparent age of the male sitter; his wife, Anne, was the only daughter of Robert Parker of Cuerden, Lancashire. Various branches of the Parker family were regular patrons of Devis . Shaw Hill, Flixton, was a Georgian house incorporating an earlier core; it was, regrettably, demolished in 1960 without being properly recorded.

As John Harris has pointed out, the conjunction of a stucco-rendered main house with extensive ranges in red brick is highly typical of 18th century domestic building in north Cheshire and Lancashire in the 18th century, and this seems a much more likely location for the buildings depicted than rural Cambridgeshire.

Whilst, therefore, we cannot identify the sitters and location of the present painting with any certainty, it is reasonable to surmise that the picture depicts members of the Lancashire Cross family outside an as yet unidentified Georgian mansion.