SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE, P.R.A. | Portrait of Hon. Edward Spencer (1779-1823), half-length, wearing a brown coat with a black collar, yellow vest and white stock

W.G. Trower Esq.;

By whom sold, London, Christie's, 8 July 1927, lot 55, for £1,260 to Agnew;

With Thomas Agnew & Sons, London (no. 6367), 1928;

Edward Hubert Litchfield;

By whose Estate sold, New York, Parke-Bernet, 11 October 1951, lot 89.

K. Garlick, 'A catalogue of the paintings, drawings and pastels of Sir Thomas Lawrence', in Walpole Society, vol. XXXIX, 1964, p. 60;

K. Garlick, Sir Thomas Lawrence. A complete catalogue of the oil paintings, Oxford 1989, p. 173, cat. no. 215.

Edward Spencer was the third son of the connoisseur George Nassau Clavering Cowper, 3rd Earl Cowper (1738-89) and Hannah Anne Gore, daughter of Charles Gore. His father and mother were both significant figures in Florence (where Edward was born) and were painted by Zoffany in several paintings, including the group portrait of the Gore family, which includes Cowper as a suitor.¹ The 3rd Earl owned a significant collection of Old Master paintings, including two Madonnas by Raphael, one of which is pictured, along with Cowper himself inspecting it, in Zoffany's Tribuna of the Uffizi.² Cowper's pictures were later exhibited at Panshanger House, Hertfordshire, built by Edward's elder brother. 

Edward married Catherine, daughter of Thomas Phillipps of Garendon Park in Leicestershire. They lived at Digswell, in Hertfordshire, a Cowper estate. This portrait is datable to circa 1810.

1 Yale Centre for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven, inv. no. B1977.14.87: https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/vufind/Record/1669246

2 Raphael's Niccolini-Cowper Madonna is in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, inv. no. 1937.1.25: https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.27.html ; and Zoffany's Tribuna of the Uffizi, is in the Royal Collection, inv. no. RCIN 406983: https://www.rct.uk/collection/406983/the-tribuna-of-the-uffizi.