Uvedale Tomkyns Price (1685–1764) and Members of His Family

The Prices were a distinguished and well-connected Welsh family with estates in Herefordshire and North Wales. Uvedale Tomkyns Price (born 1685), the second son of Judge Robert Price and his wife, Lucy Rodd, was a member of Parliament from 1713. He married Anne, daughter of Lord Arthur Somerset, and their son, Robert, was born in 1717. Anne Price's older sister Mary married Algernon Greville and had three children: Mary, Hester, and Fulke. Labels on the back of the stretcher identify Uvedale Price helping a Miss Rodd from a boat, Robert Price escorting his cousin Miss [Mary] Greville, Hester Greville feeding the swans, and Jockey [Fulke] Greville seated at far left. The three unidentified women seem to be portraits, while five other figures, including a boatman, as well as a black boy and an older man who must be servants, seem to be imagined.

The location is surely invented, with the highly artificial flight of stairs, the projecting bank, and the filmy trees having been staged by the painter, who did not complete the canvas. Only some of the heads, hands, and costumes are brought to a high degree of finish. The landscape background is indicated only slightly, and there is a major pentiment beneath the figures of Robert Price and his cousin.

When the picture was acquired by the Museum, it was accepted as a Hogarth. It was first attributed to Dandridge by Hermann Williams, writing in 1937 to C. H. Collins Baker, who published it the following year, dating it about 1728 and calling it Dandridge’s earliest known conversation piece. Based on comparison with costume studies by Dandridge engraved for publication in 1737, with which the painting shares a finicky, detailed handling of the elaborate wigs and clothing, it may instead date to the early 1730s.

[2010; adapted from Baetjer 2009]

Uvedale Tomkyns Price (until d. 1764); his grandson, Sir Uvedale Price, 1st Baronet (1764–d. 1829); his son, Sir Robert Price, 2nd Baronet (1829–d. 1857); by descent to Thomas Price, the Albany, London (until d. 1893; posthumous sale, Christie's, London, May 6, 1893, no. 49, as "The Price Family," by Hogarth, for £315 to McLean); ?[Scott & Fowles, New York]; Catholina Lambert, Paterson, N.J. (until 1916; his sale, American Art Association, New York, February 24, 1916, no. 347, for $2,700 to W. W. Seaman); [Agnew, London, 1919–20; sold through J. P. Morgan to The Met]

Detroit Institute of Arts. "English Conversation Pieces of the Eighteenth Century," January 27–February 29, 1948, no. 2.

Baltimore Museum of Art. "Age of Elegance: The Rococo and Its Effect," April 25–June 14, 1959, no. 341.

London. Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood. "The French Taste in English Painting During the First Half of the 18th Century," June 18–August 25, 1968, no. 28.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Eighteenth-Century Woman," December 12, 1981–September 5, 1982, unnumbered cat. (p. 52).

Austin Dobson. William Hogarth. London, 1902, p. 185, lists it among paintings by Hogarth of uncertain date.

H[arry]. B. W[ehle]. "A Painting by Hogarth." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 15 (April 1920), pp. 89–90, attributes it to Hogarth.

André Blum. Hogarth. Paris, 1922, p. 105, attributes it to Hogarth.

P[ercy]. M[oore]. Turner. "'The Sharpe Family' by William Hogarth." Burlington Magazine 43 (August 1923), p. 97, attributes it to Hogarth.

R. H. Wilenski. English Painting. London, 1933, pp. 75–76, pl. 10, ascribes it to Hogarth, influenced by Watteau.

Sacheverell Sitwell. Conversation Pieces: A Survey of English Domestic Portraits and their Painters. London, 1936, p. 92, no. 21, ill. opp. p. 13, attributes it to Hogarth.

H[ermann]. W. Williams. Letter to John S. Sewall. April 6, 1937, rejects the attribution to Hogarth but cannot suggest another.

Hermann W. Williams. Letter to C. H. Collins Baker. May 7, 1937, suggests attributing it to Dandridge.

C. H. Collins Baker. Letter to Harry B. Wehle. June 8, 1937, replies that he has for some years "been inclined to regard [it] as by Dandridge," the determining evidence being a signed Dandridge of Robert Price that had come up at Christie's, and mentions "a sort of Pater influence . . . active in Dandridge".

C. H. Collins Baker. "'The Price Family' by Bartholomew Dandridge." Burlington Magazine 72 (March 1938), pp. 132, 135–36, pl. 1B, gives a full account of the earlier attribution and history of the painting, dates it about 1728 on the basis of the presumed approximate birthdate of Robert Price, notes the marked French influence, the labored gallantry, linear drawing, and thin painting, and suggests the possible influence of Philippe Mercier.

Michael F. J. McDonnell. "Letters: 'The Price Family' by Bartholomew Dandridge." Burlington Magazine 73 (July 1938), pp. 38–39, notes that Uvedale Price and Dandridge attended the same school, probable evidence of their acquaintance.

Millia Davenport. The Book of Costume. New York, 1948, vol. 2, p. 744, no. 2090, ill. p. 745 (cropped).

Ellis Waterhouse. Painting in Britain, 1530 to 1790. London, 1953, pp. 137, 139 n. 10, pl. 110 [5th ed., 1994, pp. 184, 347 n. 10, pl. 146], as "pretty certainly" by Dandridge, of about 1728; observes that he "grasped the principles of Rococo style," and states that Robert Price was born in 1717.

Josephine L. Allen and Elizabeth E. Gardner. A Concise Catalogue of the European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1954, p. 26.

Mary Woodall. "Gainsborough's Use of Models." Antiques 70 (October 1956), p. 365, ill., dates it 1739, and discusses it in the context of the possible use of models for the figures.

Frederick Antal. Hogarth and His Place in European Art. London, 1962, p. 229 n. 68, pl. 30d, observes that Dandridge's sitters were mostly of the upper middle class, and finds French influence common in middle-class portraiture.

Theodore Crombie. "London Galleries: England's Taste for Europe." Apollo 88 (August 1968), p. 136, fig. 4, finds the faces hard to reconcile with Dandridge's usual portrait types.

Brian Allen. "The Age of Hogarth, 1720–1760." The British Portrait, 1660–1960. Woodbridge, England, 1991, p. 136, pl. 123, describes the brushwork as "assured [and] almost impressionist," and observes that few English painters gave themselves over so wholeheartedly to the French style as Dandridge.

Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 183, ill.

Susan Sloman. Gainsborough in Bath. New Haven, 2002, pp. 137, 150, 152, 244 n. 45, fig. 129, identifies the woman being helped from the boat by Uvedale Price as his wife, Anne Somerset, and the younger man standing at the left as Price's son, Robert, possibly with his future wife, Sarah Barrington; suggests dating the picture 1741, the year of Anne Somerset's death, and considers the possibility that her portrait is posthumous, based on its placement and scale; notes that Dandridge's work presaged that of Gainsborough.

Hugh Belsey. Thomas Gainsborough: A Country Life. Munich, 2002, p. 81, mentions that the composition of this portrait was used by Gainsborough for his double portrait of Mr. and Mrs. George Byam (Holburne Museum of Art, Bath).

Katharine Baetjer. British Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1575–1875. New York, 2009, pp. 41–42, no. 18, ill. (color).

Charles Watkins and Ben Cowell. Uvedale Price (1747–1829): Decoding the Picturesque. Woodbridge, 2012, pp. 17, 215 n. 89, fig. 5.

Kate Retford. Conversation Piece: Making Modern Art in Eighteenth-Century Britain. New Haven, 2017, pp. 70–72, 339 n. 40, fig. 58 (color), ill. pp. 32–33 (color, cropped), relates some of the poses to drawings that Dandridge made as illustrations for François Nivelon's "Rudiments of Genteel Behaviour" (1737); calls the painting "an explicit tribute to Watteau," especially his "Ile de Cythère" engraved in the early 1720s (presumably the painting of ca. 1709–10 in the Städel Museum, Frankfurt); also sees a reference to the figure of a woman being pushed forward by a cherub in Rubens's "Garden of Love" (1630–35; Museo del Prado, Madrid).

A signed portrait by Dandridge of Robert Price (29 x 23 1/2 in., half-length, in a feigned oval, the sitter wearing a blue coat with a white vest and stock) was sold at Christie's, London, November 21, 1930, no. 38, for £25.4.0, to Lever. The same or another (29 x 24 in., also signed, differing only in that the vest was described as yellow) was sold at Christie's, London, December 18, 1933, no. 137, for £8.8.0, to Schamlees.

Gainsborough painted Uvedale Price (ca. 1760; Alte Pinakothek, Munich), his son, Robert (sold, Sotheby's, New York, January 18, 1999, no. 456), and his wife, Anne.