Читать книгу The Fatal Cup: Thomas Griffiths Wainewright and the strange deaths of his relations - John Price Williams - Страница 21

said to require six pairs of scented gloves to see him through the day.

Wainewright’s ‘Byron’ was auctioned at Christies in 1892 and was bought for 19 guineas by one of the Colnaghi family, the print-sellers, whom Wainewright was to know so well at the height of his literary and artistic success. According to the National Portrait Gallery, the picture was offered to them in 1936 by Lady d’Erlanger, who was disposing of Byron memorabilia, but they refused it because it was a copy, not an original Phillips, so it went to Newstead Abbey, Byron’s ancestral home, in Nottinghamshire, where it still hangs and is said to be one of the very few of Wainewright’s works which survive in Britain.

There was another notable painting in oils from around 1816. It was of Edward Foss, not just his relative and a trustee of the bequest but a childhood friend. Foss would later be the one who sent Wainewright to his downfall.

Apprenticeship in George Street did not suit Wainewright, he had too high an opinion of his own talents. After a few restless months, he cast around for something else to do, something with more excitement than the discipline of learning a profession. He recorded years later: “ever to be whiled away by new and flashy gauds (showy ornamental things), I postponed the pencil to the sword”. He was going to join the army.

JOHN PRICE WILLIAMS

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