Footnotes

AN EXTREMELY RARE LETTER BY ZOFFANY: 'Zoffany wrote few letters... It is not known whether he kept an account book or a diary; if so, they would have been destroyed with his other papers and the majority of his drawings, all of which are said to have been burnt after his widow and eldest daughter died of cholera in 1832' (Mary Webster, Zoffany, National Portrait Gallery, 1976, p. 19).

Raikes & Co, the recipients, are recorded in London directories of the period as merchants, trading from 3 Bishopsgate Church Yard. Thomas Raikes (1741-1813) was a friend of Wilberforce and the Younger Pitt and was Governor of the Bank of England from 1797 to 1799, during the crisis that forced the government to suspend gold payments in favour of bank notes. His brother William was a director of the South Sea Company. Another letter to Raikes & Co, is printed by Manners and Williamson: 'The only other letter we have been able to discover respecting Martin and Zoffany we owe to the kindness of Mr. W. Westley Manning, who owns it. There are so few letters of Zoffany 's in existence, that this has peculiar interest, especially as it concerns his friend and patron [General Martin]. It is addressed to Messrs. Raikes and Co'; the letter in question being about 'an order I received from General Claud Martin for Shew a mechanical-Box' and dated 1801 (Victoria Manners and G.G. Williamson, John Joffany RA: His Life and Works, 1920, pp. 108-109). This letter was lot 498 in the Westley Manning sale, Sotheby's, 25 January 1955; while the only Zoffany letter recorded as sold by ABPC is our example, Sotheby's, 24 July 1987, lot 484. The "Genelli" Zoffany refers to may be the Copenhagen-born landscape painter Janus Genelli (1761-1813) who like Zoffany had lived in Italy, although we have been unable to ascertain whether he visited England.


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