Footnotes

Provenance
With Tristram Jellinek, 1976
Graham Slater Collection

This dashing figure on horseback has often been identified as General George Monck, first Duke of Albermarle (1608-1670). Michael Archer illustrates an almost identical charger in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (inv. no.62.1212), which he suggests depicts General Monck. See Archer, Victoria & Albert Museum Bulletin, Vol.4, No.1 (1968). Another very similar charger in the Longridge Collection was sold by Christie's on 11 June 2010, lot 1096, where General Monck, Charles II, James II or the Duke of Marlborough are all listed as possible sitters. However, close comparison with a print after the portrait by Edward Bower, suggests that this series of equestrian chargers depict Monck's contemporary, Sir Thomas Fairfax (1612-1671). Fairfax, arguably the most important general of the British Civil Wars was indeed referred to as 'The Rider of the White Horse', amongst his other epithets.

Thomas Fairfax was a complex figure, full of contradictions, as was often the case for those whose military and political careers spanned the tumultuous mid-17th century. He was selected as Lord General of the New Model Army, with Oliver Cromwell as his Lieutenant-General. Fairfax distinguished himself at the decisive Battle of Naseby in 1645, defeating the King's forces. However, he tellingly declined to attend Charles I's trial, nor to sign his death warrant and Fairfax returned to his native Yorkshire to see out the interregnum. Fairfax was recalled to arms by General Monck in 1659 where his formidable military acumen and reputation secured a swift victory and ultimately the restoration of the monarchy. He led the delegation to the Netherlands to urge Charles II's return to claim his throne and in a poignant gesture, Fairfax provided the horse that Charles II rode to his coronation- the foal of the mare Fairfax himself rode at the Battle of Naseby. Rather battered from years of ill-health and battle, Fairfax retired again from public life until his death in 1671.

It is tempting to date this charger within Fairfax's lifetime or even around the time of his death. However, the profile of the charger and certain decorative details such as the distinctive scale-like foliage and 'paths' in the foreground place production in the 1680s. See the charger dated 1685, painted with similar foliate motifs, illustrated by Lipski and Archer in Dated English Delftware (1984), p.33, 77. A decade after the deaths of both Fairfax and Monck there was huge public anxiety over the succession and the very continuation of monarchy. The stability so hard-won in the 1640s and 1650s was being tested and renewed expressions of enthusiasm for figures like Fairfax and Monck followed suit. The purpose of the charger was to remember the sacrifices of the great military leaders of the previous generation, to commemorate their victories and to bolster confidence in the monarchy, which was to be turned upside down yet again in the 1680s.