Chilcotts and the Big Picture

Sue Cade
Authored by Sue Cade
Posted Thursday, March 30, 2017 - 3:05pm

Auction lots come in all shapes and sizes, sometimes with an ambiguous history as Chilcotts Auctioneers discovered when a portrait was delivered to the Honiton Silver Street sale room.

The painting, an oil on canvas portrait of the Earl of Carrick in the Irish Peerage, measured 100 by 65 inches, with the frame adding another 6 inches to the already imposing size.

While these impressive measurements provided a ‘wow’ factor, the painting also created a minor mystery with regard to dating.

Auctioneer Duncan Chilcott explained: “The vendor told us that family lore supposed the character in the painting to be Somerset Butler, the 1st Earl of Carrick who lived from 1718 to 1774 and received his title in 1721.

“The painting was kept for many years as one of a pair in the London home of the 9th Earl, Brian Stuart Theobald Somerset Caher Butler. The other of the pair was a more ornate – and attractive – portrait of a young lady, Lady Juliana Boyle who the 1st Earl married in 1745.”

Several years’ ago, the then owner no longer had the space to accommodate the painting. He asked the vendor, an indirect descendant of the family, to store the giant portrait. When the vendor recently moved to another property he didn’t have the storage space either. As his relative did not want it back, this literally large piece of history had to be sold.

The painting attracted a great deal of interest at the sale, with the hammer coming down at £5,740 (including the buyer’s premium) after a fierce, tense and entertaining telephone and internet bidding battle.

However, the buyer, an art and antiques dealer of national renown, believes the portrait could be a later painting than the family believes. He suggests it could be from the 1820s, which would make the sitter the 3rd Earl – another Somerset Butler. Chilcotts had also catalogued the painting as from the 19th Century adding substance to this belief.

Duncan added: “It then struck us that perhaps for many years the Earl was paired, at least on the wall, with the wrong wife!”

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