John Singer Sargent, 'Lord Ribblesdale', 1902

Lord Ribblesdale

John Singer Sargent

Central Hall

About the work

Overview

This full-length portrait is of Thomas Lister, who became the 4th (and last) Baron Ribblesdale in 1876, when he was just 22. He was a Liberal peer, a lord-in-waiting at court and a Trustee of both the National Portrait Gallery and the National Gallery.

Plans to paint Lord Ribblesdale in formal hunting dress, wearing his full livery, were abandoned. Instead, he wears his own hunting clothes, their practicality revealing something of his character. With one hand on his hip, his pose is casual yet confident, with just a hint of swagger. His top hat, set at a slight angle, also introduces a note of rakishness. Sargent has deliberately elongated Ribblesdale’s tall, lean body, its vertical line reinforced by the perpendicular of the fluted pilaster behind him. His compact silhouette and the taut outlines of his long coat further enhance his stature.

In-depth

This full-length portrait is of Thomas Lister, who became the 4th (and last) Lord Ribblesdale in 1876, when he was just 22. He was a Liberal peer, a lord-in-waiting at court and a Trustee of both the National Portrait Gallery and the National Gallery. At the time he painted it, John Singer Sargent was a highly regarded society portraitist. This portrait was not a commission, but was instigated by Sargent himself after he had seen Lord Ribblesdale give a speech in 1894 (although he did not begin work on it for another five years).

A dedicated sportsman, Ribblesdale had been Master of the Queen’s Buckhounds between 1892 and 1895. Plans to paint him in full hunting livery were abandoned. Instead, Ribblesdale wears his own informal ‘ratcatcher’ hunting clothes, their practicality revealing something of his character. Holding a riding whip, he wears a pale yellow waistcoat, dark brown jacket, box-cloth breeches, grey kid gloves and polished black leather butcher boots. His outfit is completed by a large unbuttoned Chesterfield overcoat. His face is framed by a black silk muffler, worn to one side when hunting, and a top hat, which he also wore while hunting. A thin line of red paint at the end of the whip’s coiled cord (the ‘popper’) is the only touch of bright colour in a picture almost entirely composed in muted tones of black, yellow-ochre and greenish grey.

In a preliminary oil sketch Lord Ribblesdale is standing on steps, with one leg raised, in front of a large column. In the final portrait he poses against the more neutral panelling of Sargent’s studio at Tite Street, London. With one hand on his hip, his pose is casual yet confident, with just a hint of swagger. His top hat, set at a slight angle, also introduces a note of rakishness. Sargent has deliberately elongated Ribblesdale’s tall, lean body, its vertical line reinforced by the perpendicular of the fluted pilaster behind him. His compact silhouette and the taut outlines of his long coat, particularly below the waist, further enhance his stature.

It is likely that Sargent chose the coat himself. He had previously painted W. Graham Robertson (Tate, London) wearing an identical Chesterfield overcoat (Robertson’s own) with a black velvet collar, and also posing with a hand on his hip. In that portrait, Sargent had included a vertical backdrop (a doorframe) and props (a walking cane) to create the same effect of elongating the figure – a technique used also by his contemporary, James McNeil Whistler. But while Robertson appears as a typical late nineteenth-century aesthete, Lord Ribblesdale, as the epitome of Edwardian patrician authority, represents a very different social type.

The portrait was highly praised when first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1902 and came to define the public perception of Ribblesdale. When it was exhibited in Paris the following year, Lord Ribblesdale revealed how it ‘forced greatness upon me … wherever I go, I am recognised‘. On seeing him some 15 years later, the novelist Virginia Woolf noted that Ribblesdale was ‘the very image of his picture – only obviously seedy and dissolute’. Upon Lord Ribblesdale’s death in 1925, it was the portrait that was reproduced in his obituary, despite having been painted over 20 years earlier.

Want to find out more?

Delve deeper and explore the catalogue entry for this painting.

Key facts

Details

Full title: Lord Ribblesdale
Artist: John Singer Sargent
Artist dates: 1856 - 1925
Date made: 1902
Medium and support: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 258.4 × 143.5 cm
Inscription summary: Signed; Dated
Acquisition credit: Presented by Lord Ribblesdale in memory of Lady Ribblesdale and his sons, Captain the Hon. Thomas Lister and Lieutenant the Hon. Charles Lister, 1916
Inventory number: NG3044
Location: Central Hall
Collection: Main Collection
Previous owners: Thomas Lister, 4th Baron Ribblesdale
Frame: 18th-century English Frame

Provenance

Painted for Lord Ribblesdale; presented by him ‘as a memorial of Lady Ribblesdale and his sons, Capt. the Hon. Thomas Lister DSO, 10th Hussars, killed at Jidballi, Somaliland [1904], and Lieut, the Hon. Charles Lister (HM Diplomatic Service), Hood Battalion, Royal Naval Division, who fell in Gallipoli, 1915’ to the National Gallery 1915.

Additional information

Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Judy Egerton, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: The British Paintings’, London 2000; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.

Exhibition history

2015

Delacroix and the Rise of Modern Art

Minneapolis Institute of Art

18 October 2015 - 10 January 2016
2018

John Singer Sargent

Nationalmuseum (Stockholm)

4 October 2018 - 13 January 2019
2023

Sargent and Fashion

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

2 October 2023 - 15 January 2024

Tate Britain

21 February 2024 - 7 July 2024

Bibliography

1897

Ribblesdale, The Queen's Hounds and Stag-Hunting Recollections, London 1897
1904

'Foreign Correspondence: Notes from Paris: The Exhibitions', The Burlington Magazine, V/15, 1904, pp. 326-7
1915

London, National Gallery Archive, NG17/8 Annual Reports, 1911-1920: Report of the Director of the National Gallery for the Year, 1915, 1915
1916

C. Aitken, 'Mr Asher Wertheimer's Benefaction', The Burlington Magazine, XXIX/161, 1916, pp. 216-20
1917

Ribblesdale, Charles Lister: Letters and Recollections, London 1917
1920

National Gallery, National Gallery: Catalogue of the Pictures at Trafalgar Square, London 1920
1925

Anon., 'Comment on Lord Ribblesdale', The Times, 1925
1925

'Obituary: Lord Ribblesdale', The Times, 1925
1927

E.E. Charteris, John Singer Sargent, London 1927
1927

Ribblesdale, Impressions and Memories, London 1927
1930

B. Lister (ed.), Emma, Lady Ribblesdale, Letters and Diaries, London 1930
1956

L.E. Jones, An Edwardian Youth, London 1956
1956

D. McKibbin, Sargent's Boston With an Essay and a Bibliographical Summary and a Complete Check List of Sargent's Portraits, Boston 1956
1964

M. Chamot, D. Farr and M. Butlin, Tate Gallery Catalogues: Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964
1964

D. Fielding, The Duchess of Jermyn Street: The Life and Times of Rosa Lewis of the Cavendish Hotel, London 1964
1979

J. Lomax and R. Ormond, John Singer Sargent and the Edwardian Age, (exh. cat. The Detroit Institute of Fine Arts, 17 October - 19 December 1979), Leeds 1979
1984

J. Abdy and C. Gere, The Souls, London 1984
1986

S. Olson, John Singer Sargent, London 1986
1986

A. Boime and , 'Sargent in Paris and London', in John Singer Sargent, New York 1986, pp. 75-101
1987

J. Fane, Memories of My Mother [Diana Lister, Countess of Wetmorland], London 1987
1987

D. Robinson, 'John Singer Sargent. Chicago, Art Institute', The Burlington Magazine, CXXIX/1009, 1987, pp. 274-5
1992

G. Beard, The Complete Gentleman: Five Centuries of Aristocratic Life, New York 1992
1994

R. Dorment, 'Picture Choice', National Gallery News, 1994
1997

C. Gibson, Sargent, London 1997
1997

J.R. Rolfe et al., The Portrait of a Lady: Sargent and Lady Agnew (exh. cat. Scottish National Gallery, 8 August - 19 October 1997), Edinburgh 1997
1998

J. Egerton, The British School, London 1998
1998

E. Prettejohn, Interpreting Sargent, London 1998
1998

E. Kilmurray and R. Ormond, John Singer Sargent (exh. cat. Tate Gallery, 15 October 1998 - 17 January1999; National Gallery of Art, Washington, 21 February - 31 May 1999; Museum of Fine Arts, 23 June - 26 September 1999), London 1998
1999

C. Wood, Victorian Painting, London 1999
2000

Egerton, Judy, National Gallery Catalogues: The British Paintings, revised edn, London 2000
2001

C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 2001
2002

Kilmurray and R. Ormond (eds), Sargent e l'Italia (exh. cat. Palazzo dei Diamanti, Ferrara, 22 September 2002 - 6 January 2003), Ferrara 2002
2004

A. Gray et al., The Edwardians: Secrets and Desires (exh. cat. National Gallery of Australia, 12 March - 4 June 2004; Art Gallery of South Australia, 9 July -19 September 2004), Canberra 2004

Frame

This eighteenth-century English frame is crafted from pinewood. It features carved shell centre cartouches and lambrequins in the corner cartouches. In between, a decoration in the style of Jean Berain – a designer at the court of Louis XIV – adds an elegant touch. The back edge showcases a dentil motif, while the sanded flat sits adjacent to the French acanthus-leaf sight edge.

Heavily influenced by the French Louis XIV style, this frame displays a unique British school of carving. However, multiple layers of overgilding have obscured the background tooling that once provided texture.

Although not original to Sargent’s Lord Ribblesdale, the frame is well suited to the painting.

About this record

If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.

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