Gallery Notes®, Summer 2026

Walton came from a relatively humble background in south Norfolk, and left for London in 1765 when he was nineteen years old. He trained under Johann Zoffany (1733-1810), and the influence of this important artist can be detected in the small-scale group portaits, known as ‘conversation pieces’, which Walton made his speciality. In 1772 he was elected a Director of the Society of Artists and exhibited four pictures in their exhibition, while at about this time he painted the first of several portraits of his most famous sitter, the historian Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) (see for example London, National Portrait Gallery (1443)). After being unsuccessful in being elected as a member of the Royal Academy in November 1778,, Walton began to spend more time back at his property in Burgate, near Diss. As a result, the majority of the sitters in his portraits were friends, or friends of friends known to him through local East Anglian connections. As in our picture, Walton’s sitters are simply yet elegantly attired, and often set in extensive landscapes. Walton also gave advice to a number of private collectors of Old Masters, and appears to have acted in the role of ‘marchand amateur’. The grace and refinement latent in our lovely double-portrait belie the relative modesty of Henry Walton’s position in the golden age of British painting, and the painting would not look amiss on the walls of that temple of collecting in ‘the Gilded Age’, the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, home to Gainsborough’s Blue Boy, Lawrence’s Pinkie and many other gems of British portraiture.