Andrea Casali

Guy Chapman and John Hodgkin, A Biography of William Beckford of Fonthill, 1930, p.115;
J.W. Oliver, The Life of William Beckford, 1932, p. 90;
A.B. Fothergill, Beckford of Fonthill, 1979, p. 29;
H.A.N. Brockman, The Caliph of Fonthill, 1956, p. 48 illus.;
John Ingamells, Mid-Georgian Portraits 1760-1790, 2004, p.46

One of history’s most enthusiastic collectors, and one of England’s greatest eccentrics, William Beckford, the ‘prodigious virtuoso’ is portrayed here at the age of about six years old. 

William Beckford was the son of William Beckford, a sugar planter and politician in Jamaica, and his wife, Maria, granddaughter of the sixth Earl of Abercorn.  Beckford’s father returned to England in 1744, and some years later built a mansion at Fonthill which was so lavish that it acquired the epithet ‘Splendens’.  Beckford was educated at home, and his first tutor, Robert Dysdale, described his young pupil as "exceedingly sprightly....He is of a very agreeable disposition..." (Robert Dysdale, quoted in J.W.Oliver, The Life of William Beckford of Fonthill, 1932, p.9).  He was later educated by the Revd John Lettice, and also by Alexander Cozens, his drawing master, and Sir William Chambers, who taught him architecture.  In 1777 Beckford travelled to Geneva where he witnessed the Grande Chartreuse, the architecture of which was later to inspire his own vision of Fonthill Abbey.

Beckford came into a vast inheritance in 1782, and the following year was married to Lady Margaret Gordon, daughter of the Earl of Aboyne.  He was destined for a political career, and indeed a peerage, but a scandal involving Viscount William Courtenay prevented this, and he was obliged to go abroad.  Beckford travelled to Switzerland, and it was here that he wrote his oriental novel, Vathek.  It may have been this enforced absence from public life which drew Beckford to collect vast numbers of books, paintings, furniture and objects.    In 1796-97 he bought the entire library of Edward Gibbon, reading all the volumes in six weeks.  He housed these in his new mansion, Fonthill Abbey, a magnificent building in the Gothic style designed by James Wyatt.  Fonthill Abbey was a monument to excess.  The galleries were lit by stained glass designed by Benjamin West, and a fortune was consumed on building towers and ornamentations which subsequently collapsed.

The structural element which remained secure was the lofty wall which Beckford built around Fonthill Abbey.  He was keen to exclude tourists, hunters and sportsmen from his world, as well as to protect the animals which lived within in.  Nature was always very important to the young Beckford.  He once remarked, "I am fond of animals, the birds in the plantations of Fonthill seem to know me" (Cyrus Reading, Memoirs of William Beckford, 1859, Vol.II, pp.94-95), and this is reflected in the present portrait by the small bird which Beckford holds in his hand. 

Andrea Casali had a long standing relationship with the Beckford family.  He painted a series of decorative schemes for the sitter’s father, and painted portraits of his mother, father and half-sister, Elizabeth Marsh.  Elizabeth remarked of the present portrait, "An excellent portrait of my Brother by Casali in an oval of an elegant ornamental Glass.  Casali has taken the strongest resemblance of my Brother, and it is a sweet pretty picture" (Guy Chapman and John Hodgkin, A Biography of William Beckford of Fonthill, 1930, p.115).  This intimate portrait of the young Beckford passed to his daughter, Susan Euphemia, who married Alexander, 10^th Duke of Hamilton.  The work passed thereafter by descent to the present Duke of Hamilton.