Footnotes

• Henry was the eldest child of Henry Seymour MP, JP (1776-1849) of Knoyle House, Wiltshire and Jane Hopkinson (d.14 March 1869). He remained unmarried and died without issue.
  
  A member of the Liberal Party, Henry sat as Member of Parliament for Poole between 1850-1868. From 1855, Henry acted as Secretary to the Board of Control, the body which oversaw the activities of the East India Company, until the Company's abolition in 1858.
  
  Henry was a seasoned traveller, climbing Mount Ararat in 1846; he later penned two topographical works, 'Russia on the Black Sea and Sea of Azof' and 'Caravan Journeys and Wanderings in Persia, Afghanistan, Turkistan, and Beloochistan'. A fervent scholar of Ancient civilisations, in 1856 Henry donated five fragments of the Tomb of Sobekhotep, Thebes, to the British Museum, and co-wrote a two-volume book entitled 'A History of Egypt Under the Pharaohs'.
  
  Henry was the archetypal Victorian gentleman-collector, acquiring an extensive body of works by Old Masters, which included Albrecht Durer's 'Portrait of a Peasant Woman' (British Museum), the triptych attributed to Goossen van der Weyden and entitled 'St Catherine and the Philosophers' (National Gallery, London), a series of Rembrandt's etchings and a host of works housed today in every pre-eminent public collection in Britain and the United States. In addition, Henry appears to have owned a collection of personal letters to Louis XV from the 'Mesdames', perhaps a result of his paternal grandfather having once been a lover of the infamous Madame du Barry.

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Category: Fine Art / Portrait Miniatures

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