Left: Portrait of Sir John Mordaunt (1808-1845). Right: Plate XL in Cust, showing the portraits of Sir John Mordaunt and three others. [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Sir John Mordaunt (1808-1845), by Margaret Sarah Carpenter. 1829. Oil on canvas. Collection and image credit: Eton College. Accession no. FDA-P.68-2010. Reproduced here via Art UK, for purposes of academic research (see bibliography). The portrait was photographed later for the catalogue of Eton College portraits assembled by Lionel Cust, in one plate of which, as shown alongside, it appears together with similar portraits of (top right) John Wickens (1815-1873), and (lower left) Sir Stafford Northcote (1818-1887) and (lower right) Thomas Thellusson Carter (1808-1891).
In his introduction, Cust explains that the Eton College portraits were often taken shortly after the pupils had left the college, and, as a consequence, reflected the early exciting months during which the individual sitter felt he was entering into manhood, with a sense of his future life unfolding. Cust goes on to give brief histories of each: Mordaunt unfortunately died in an accident in 1845, but Wickens became a very eminent judge and was knighted in 1871; Northcote held several top government posts before becoming Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and being created Earl of Iddesleigh; and Carter became Rector of Clewer.
This last may sound unimpressive but in fact Clewer, in the area of Windsor, was and is an important parish, and this young man would become an extraordinarily influential churchman, founding a House of Mercy at Clewer for fallen women, initiating the retreat movement, writing several major and widely read and discussed religious works, and earning a reputation for saintliness: Valerie Bonham tells us that "the Daily Telegraph declared him 'one of the most venerated and the last of the Tractarians.'"
Clearly, by painting over 100 portraits for Eton College, most of them, as Richard J. Smith says, "leaving portraits" of the boys, Carpenter was creating a gallery of some of the most prominent men of her day, at the very dawn of their careers. Here she was following in the footsteps of several famous artists, including Gainsborough and Reynolds, who had previously been engaged for such a purpose. It was a mark of real recognition for her to have received these numerous commissions.
On the negative side, Cust maintains that the "average excellence of the portraits" declined over the years (8), and actually mentions Carpenter among those painters who were less notable than their predecessors. His explanation is that by this time, portraits were becoming "a duty to be performed with as little expense as possible, or within the limits of the customary leaving-money" (9). Be that as it may, there is a freshness and charm about Carpenter's portraits that is very beguiling, and it is hard to imagine any ways in which they can have fallen short of the earlier ones. — Jacqueline Banerjee
Bibliography
Bonham, Valerie. "Carter, Thomas Thellusson (1808–1901), Church of England clergyman." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Online ed. Web. 25 October 2024.
Cust, Lionel. Introduction. Eton College Portraits. London: Spottiswoode, 1910. 3-10. Internet Archive, from a copy in the Getty Research Institute. Web. 25 October 2024.
Sir John Mordaunt. Art UK. Web. 25 October 2024.
Smith, Richard J. "Carpenter [née Geddes], Margaret Sarah (1793–1872), portrait and genre painter." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Online ed. Web. 25 October 2024.
Created 25 October 2024