Bartholomew Dandridge (1691-1755), Portrait of William Cuninghame, 13th Earl of Glencairn

Oil on canvas; signed lower right; held in original period carved giltwood frame.

Provenance:

By family descent until sold in 2016.

Exhibited: Culzean Castle, loaned to The National Trust, Scotland (1984-1998)

Subsequently in a Private Collection, Somerset, England.

The sitter was the son of William Cuninghame, 12th Earl of Glencairn and Lady Henrietta Stewart. He succeeded his father to the title as 13th Earl of Glencairn and as Governor of Dumbarton Castle in 1734. On 6th August 1744, he married Elizabeth, daughter of Hugh Maguire of Drumdow, Ayrshire, with whom he had two surviving sons and a daughter. He joined the army as an ensign (1729) and gained the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel (1747) in the service of the 9th Foot and later rose to the rank of Major General (1770).

Glencairn stands beside a substantial globe which together with the ship in the background suggests travelling across Europe to the Americas and the West Indies with his regiment probably during the War of the Spanish Succession.

Bartholomew Dandridge studied at Sir Godfrey Kneller’s academy of painting and later attended the St Martin’s Lane Academy following its foundation in 1720. For more than four decades he ran a successful and fashionable portrait practice in London; the highlight of his career was being in 1732 when he was commissioned by Lord Barington to paint Frederick, Prince of Wales, on horseback. In 1731, Dandridge acquired the London studio and house of Sir Godfrey Kneller. His last recorded work was in 1754 suggesting he died around that time.