Oil painting entitled 'Sancho Panza and the Duchess' by Thomas Stothard. Great Britain, ca. late 18th, early 19th century.

Oil painting

Given by John Sheepshanks, 1857

Given by John Sheepshanks, 1857
Extract from Parkinson, Ronald, Catalogue of British Oil Paintings 1820-1860. Victoria & Albert Museum, HMSO, London, 1990. p.xviii.

John Sheepshanks (1784-1863) was the son of a wealthy cloth manufacturer. He entered the family business, but his early enthusiasms were for gardening and the collecting of Dutch and Flemish prints. He retired from business at the age of 40, by which time he had begun collecting predominantly in the field of modern British art. He told Richard Redgrave RA, then a curator in the South Kensington Museum (later the V&A) of his intention to give his collection to the nation. The gallery built to house the collection was the first permanent structure on the V&A site, and all concerned saw the Sheepshanks Gift as forming the nucleus of a National Gallery of British Art. Sheepshanks commissioned works from contemporary artists, bought from the annual RA summer exhibitions, but also bought paintings by artists working before Queen Victoria ascended the throne in 1837. The Sheepshanks Gift is the bedrock of the V&A's collection of British oil paintings, and served to encourage many other collectors to make donations and bequests.

Historical significance: Thomas Stothard (1755-1834) was a highly prolific painter, book illustrator and designer. After his father's death in 1770 he began his working life apprenticed to a Huguenot silk weaver. At the completion of his apprenticeship in 1777 he entered the Royal Academy Schools, and there struck up life-long friendships with the sculptor John Flaxman and with William Blake. He exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1778 until his death in 1834, and from 1778 also began to produce illustrations for various publishers and magazines such as the Ladies' Magazine. He sometimes exhibited the original designs for such illustrations at the Royal Academy exhibitions. In his day he was highly respected as a history painter in oil, but the V&A collections of drawings and watercolours reflect his reputation during the 19th century predominantly as an illustrator, as well as a designer of a multitude of objects such as silver salvers to funerary monuments. As the Dictionary of National Biography notes, Stothard took 'advantage of the opportunities afforded by publishing and the industrial arts, while maintaining a reputation in the more respectable reaches of high art'. For example Stothard exhibited works on a grander scale than was his norm for Bowyer's 'Historic Gallery' (1790-1806). But many of the oils now in the V&A are on a modest scale and are perhaps designs for printed illustrations, rather than 'finished' history paintings. Stothard played a respected part in the art world of his day, and from 1812 until his death at the age of seventy-nine he held the post of librarian of the Royal Academy.

The subject is from Cervantes, Don Quixote, Part II, Chapter 33 [Jarvis's Translation, ed. 1840]; "Sancho Panza did not indulge in his accustomed siesta that afternoon, but ... went directly he had dined to see the duchess, who, delighted to hear him talk, made him sit down by her on a low stool, though Sancho ... would have declined seating himself in her presence ... all the duchess's damsels and duennas gathered round... to hear what he would say."

Perhaps surprisingly Miguel de Cervantes novel Don Quixote was hugely popular throughout the 19th century. Many oil paintings in the V&A collection depict scenes from the novel, by artists such as William Powell Frith R.A., Sir John Gilbert R.A., P.R.W.S., Sir Edwin Landseer R.A., Charles Robert Leslie R.A. and John Massey Wright. Written between 1605-15, it was the story of an adventurous Spanish knight and his squire. This painting by Stothard, along with museum numbers 1837-1900 and 1840-1900 also illustrating scenes from Don Quixote by Stothard, demonstrates that the taste for images of Cervantes pre-dates the Victorian era when it was at its height.

As with many of Stothard's small oil paintings, it is unclear whether this is a sketch for a printed illustration or is a finished oil intended primarily for display and sale. On the one hand the image has so far not been matched to a finished print or illustration, and modesty of scale and even a somewhat sketchy nature seems to be no indication of function - large scale oils were rare in Stothard's oeuvre. On the other, Stothard was so prolific as an illustrator and designer that it may yet prove to be a design for an illustration.

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