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This  beautiful portrait of George William Campbell, 6th Duke of Argyll is one of Hugh Douglas Hamilton’s greatest pastels. The drawing was made in Rome in 1788 when the sitter - at the time styled as the Marquess of Lorne - was on his Grand Tour and aged just twenty years old. Since its creation in 1788 the picture has descended for 244 years through the family. The drawing hasn’t been seen in public since 1913 when it was shown in a loan exhibition of Irish Art held at the Whitechapel Art Gallery. Twenty-five years beforehand it had its only other public showing at another loan exhibition, held at the Grosvenor Gallery in its Winter Exhibition of 1889: A Second Series of a Century of British Art from 1737 to 1837. The poet and critic William Cosmo Monkhouse who was reviewing the exhibition for the Academy remarked that ‘Hamilton’s portrait of George, sixth Duke of Argyll is excellent’. The picture represents the rare occurrence of a portraitist successfully and consummately instilling an ideal character, a tuneful presence to the expression and form of his sitter, an intimité, to use a favourite Walter Pater catchword, of  ‘a subtler sense of originality, an impress of a personal quality, a profound expressiveness.’

Lady Constance Russell, the grand-niece of the sitter and a previous owner of the pastel, describes in a posthumously published article for The Connoisseur, how,  in 1791 on his return journey from Italy, Lord Lorne ‘revelled in some of the sylvan delights at le Petit Trianon, and he was also at the entertainments in Paris given by Genevieve de Grammont, Comtesse d'Ossun, in 1791, where Marie Antoinette took a childish delight in dancing the Ecossaises with him…. a time when he was basking in the smiles of the fascinating queen.’ His handsome appearance was widely commented on, with Lady Russell attributing this fortune to the fact that his mother was ‘the beautiful Elizabeth Gunning’ - the renowned Irish beauty - who married two dukes - and fathered four more. She was characterised at the time by Elizabeth Montagu - along with Elizabeth’s elder sister Maria - as “these goddesses of Gunnings, wrapped in quilted satin pelisses, their lovely throats hid by rich furs, which set off the brilliancy of their complexions. In this garb, the beauties took their noble admirers' hearts by storm and fairly beat down and extinguished every remnant of prudence.’ 

‘The [picture] represents him with his own hair, slightly waved and powdered, and he wears a brown [sic] coat with small turned-back lapels of buff and brown [sic], and a white jabot. Lord Lorne was born in 1768, succeeded to the Dukedom of Argyll in 1806 and died without issue in 1839, when he was succeeded by his younger brother.’ The diarist Thomas Raikes, an intimate friend of Argyll’s, wrote of him as ‘an amiable, thoughtless man, who whistled away the cares of life’. James Taylor in ‘The Great Historic Families of Scotland’, described the sixth Duke of Argyll as ‘a handsome man of pleasure, and a friend of the Prince Regent, whose extravagances deeply injured the family estates’. This profligacy is sadly ironic in light of the personal motto of the Dukes of Argyll, “Vix ea nostra voco” (I scarcely call these things our own). Tim Siddons elaborates on this theme, declaring that ‘he was an inveterate gambler, and not a very good one at that. He was bailed out on more than one occasion by his father, who blamed his son’s debts on ‘very bad hours,’ and believed the best remedy for his gambling problems ‘was marriage’. Not until 1810, when Argyll was aged 42 did he marry Lady Caroline Elizabeth Villiers, the eldest daughter of the fourth Earl of Jersey, and recently divorced from Lord Henry Paget, future Marquess of Anglesey. In 1814, Caroline, Duchess of Argyll was chosen to be part of a series of portrait paintings known as the ‘Gallery of Beauties’ commissioned by George IV whilst he was still prince regent (see Anne Mee’s miniature in the Royal Collection, RCIN 420781). The Duke and Duchess of Argyll lived in Inveraray Castle, which alongside Walpole’s Strawberry Hill, is one of the earliest buildings constructed in the Gothic Revival style. Argyll was a Whig politician and sat in parliament for St. Germains in Cornwall from 1790-6, Keeper of the Great Seal of Scotland from 1827-28 and 1830-39; Lord Steward of the Household 1833-34 and 1835-39; and a Privy Councillor from 1833 until his death six years later. Campbell was a close friend of the Prince of Wales and acted as councillor to the Prince Regent from 1811 to 1820, and he was also a loyal confrère to Beau Brummell and the notorious bay window at White's Club. “The bow window that became [Beau Brummell’s] exclusive preserve was added in 1812. Here he gathered his inner circle-the Duke of Argyll, Lords Alvanley, Sefton, Worcester, and Foley, "Poodle" Byng, "Ball" Hughes, and Sir Lumley Skeffington. No one dared sit there who had not been favored by the Beau. Everyone in the "bow window” could be seen by those who passed by the club, but Brummell’s stringent ruling made the recognition or greeting to any passerby a dreadful breach of etiquette. Gambling and betting were the chief forms of entertainment. White's Betting Book was famous for the vast array of subjects listed within it. Fashionable gentlemen could and did have differences of opinion on an infinite variety of topics. Through the years of Napoleon’s ascent, bets on his downfall or victory were commonplace. Life and death matters were also sometimes argued - who would bear a child first, who would die first, when would they die or marry. Nothing was too sacred or absurd to make a wager on."

The Duke of Argyll was first acquainted with Sir Walter Scott from 1802 (see “Walter Scott to George Ellis, 2 March 1802 in Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott) but as Thomas Campbell relates in his memoirs, “His [Scott] mention of the Dukes of Argyle, towards whom, save on one occasion, Scott showed he had no friendly feeling, was not like himself, nor consistent with fact. It happened, in one case, that the only nobleman of that house he had spared and admitted to possess some amiable qualities, was the grandfather of his friend the Duke of Buccleugh [sic]. This being observed, by Campbell, he passed it over without any remark; he probably thought every writer of fiction had a justifiable latitude to indulge his predilections. But when George IV. visited Scotland, Scott came to facts. He wrote two songs, before the king’s arrival, to an old Scotch air, “Carle, now the King’s come,” into which he introduced all the Scotch nobles except the Duke of Argyle. The thing was so palpable, that Scott could not avoid hearing of it, and then made an excuse for the omission by stating that he had heard the Duke of Argyle was not coming to Edinburgh. This did not mend the matter, because other noblemen had not arrived when the songs were written, and yet were introduced; among the absentees being the recent Duke of Hamilton. Such was the mode in which the affair was told to Campbell. At these things the poet expressed his regret. Afterwards, when he heard that the king had shown peculiar attention to the Duke of Argyle, and that Scott was then observed to take marked notice of the duke also, and that it had been altogether a subject of notice in Scotland, he again spoke of the pity it was that Scott should have shown such a feeling. “Let Scott have a political bias,” said Campbell, “we all have it; but why carry the enmity towards a whole race? If an old Duke of Argyle were opposed to the Jacobites, why retort the feeling upon the present generation? When the Stuarts are extinct, why should their friends, on the strength of tradition, be inimical to the descendants of their opponents, who are guiltless of treason against those whose memory is only honoured upon the faith of others. Scotland owed a debt of gratitude to the Argyle family, and to the Covenanters too, worth all the Stuarts, for the freedom they were the means of working out by their uncompromising resistance to tyranny.”

An amusing episode concerning the Duke of Argyll and the Duke of Wellington is related by the reigning courtesan of Regency London, Harriette Wilson, whose memoirsoriginally published in 1825, were scandalous, libellous and sensational. She “was on terms of intimacy, about 1805, with the sixth Duke of Argyle” and according to her memoirs he remained for many years one of her great loves: ‘And, at the moment, I made a sort of determination not to let the beautiful and voluptuous expression of Argyle's dark blue eyes take possession of my fancy.”

The humorous scene between Argyll and Wellington, one of the central vignettes of Harriette Wilson’s memoirs, was illustrated as a print by J Lewis Marks. “While my readers amuse themselves with the interesting adventure which happened on the very night of Wellington's arrival from Spain, and which I beg a thousand pardons for not having made them acquainted with in due order and proper time. "Good news! Glorious news! Who calls?" said Master Puff, the newsman.—Not that anybody called the least in the world; but Wellington was really said to have won a mighty battle and was hourly expected. Cannons were fired and much tallow consumed in illumination. His Grace of Argyle came to me earlier than usual on that memorable evening; but, being unwell and love-sick, he found me in my bed-chamber. "Quelle bizarre idée vous passe par la tête?" said I. "Surely you have forgotten the amiable duchess, his bride, and all the fatigue His Grace encountered, enough to damp the ardour of any mighty hero or plenipotentiary, for one evening at any rate; therefore, trust me, Wellington will not disturb us to-night.” At this very moment a thundering rap at the door was heard. "Vive l'amour! Vive la guerre," said Argyle—"Le voila!" And hastily throwing my dressing-gown over his shoulders, and putting on one of my old night-caps, haying previously desired "the most particlerst [sic] man as is" not to let anybody in, hastily put his head out of my bedroom window, which was on the second floor, and soon recognised the noble chieftain, Wellington! Endeavouring to imitate the voice of an old duenna, Argyle begged to know who was at the door. "Come down I say," roared this modern Blue Beard, "and don't keep me here in the rain, you old blockhead.” "Sir," answered Argyle, in a shrill voice, "you must please to call your name, or I don't dare to come down, robberies are so frequent in London just at this season, and all the sojers, you see, coming home from Spain, that it's quite alarming to poor lone women.” Wellington took off his hat, and held up towards the lamp a visage, which late fatigue and present vexation had rendered no bad representation of that of the knight of the woeful figure. While the rain was trickling down his nose, his voice, trembling with rage and impatience, cried out, "You old idiot, do you know me now?” "Lord, sir," answered Argyle, anxious to prolong this ridiculous scene, "I can't give no guess; and do you know sir, the thieves have stolen a new water-butt out of our airy, not a week since, and my missis is more timbersome than ever!” "The devil!" vociferated Wellington, who could endure no more, and, muttering bitter imprecations between his closed teeth against all the duennas and old women that had ever existed, returned home to his neglected wife and family duties.”