Important British Paintings (1500-1850)

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Lot 31
  • 31

Allan Ramsay 1713-1784

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Description

  • Allan Ramsay
  • Portrait of General Sir James Campbell of Lawers
  • signed l.r.:A Ramsay / 1744
  • oil on canvas
Three-quarter length, standing, wearing uniform, and holding a baton of military office, an encampment beyond

Provenance

By descent from the sitter, Loudoun Castle;
Viscount Lee of Fareham by 1923;
With Leggatt by 1927 (as Earl of Stair);
Walter de Zoete, Blenheim House, North Berwick, his sale, Christie's, 5th April 1935, lot 121, bt. Doig, Wilson & Wheatley;
R.M. Guild, Edinburgh by 1949;
Thence by descent

Exhibited

Edinburgh, Whytock & Reid, Portraits and Drawings by Allan Ramsay, 1949, no.3

Literature

T. Borenius, Catalogue of the Lee Collection, 1923, no.48 (as Lord Stair);
Alastair Smart, The Life and Art of Allan Ramsay, 1952, pp.54, 208, fig.xxiii;
Alastair Smart, Allan Ramsay, A Complete Catalogue of his Paintings, 1999, no.74

Catalogue Note

The sitter was the third son of James Campbell, Second Earl of Loudoun (d.1684) and his wife Lady Margaret Montgomerie (d.1686), second daughter of the seventh earl of Eglinton. He married, as his first wife, Lady Jean Boyle, eldest daughter of David Boyle, first Earl of Glasgow.  He married, as his second wife, Jean Fairlie, with whom they had a son, James Mure-Campbell, fifth Earl of Loudoun (1726–1786) and at least one daughter called Margaret or Elizabeth. Jean died at Lawers on 19 December 1729 and was buried at Kilmarnock on 26 December.

Campbell entered the army as Lieutenant in the Scots Foot Guards in September 1693 and his commission was renewed in 1702 when he joined the Royal Scots Fusiliers, with whom he fought at Blenheim. In August 1706 Campbell was made lieutenant-colonel of the 2nd Royal North British Dragoons (later the Scots Greys), whom he commanded at Oudenarde and at Malplaquet on 11 September 1709, where he greatly distinguished himself.

During a prolonged period of peace he was MP for Ayrshire (1727-1741) and served as Governor of Edinburgh Castle. His parliamentary defeat in 1741 was at the hands of an anti-Walpole candidate backed by John Campbell, second Duke of Argyll. However in 1742, when war was again declared against France he was promoted Lieutenant-General, and accompanied the King to Germany as General Commanding the Cavalry. He was invested as Knight of the Bath by George II after the battle of Dettingen on 16 June 1743 before the entire army, and he continued to command the Cavalry after the King returned to England. He died at the Battle of Fontenoy in April 1745, and was buried in Brussels.