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125
Charles Jervas (1675-1739)
SIR EDWARDWORTLEY MONTAGU (1678-1761)
oil on canvas
titled on label on reverse
49.5 by 40.5in. (125.73 by 102.87cm)
Provenance:
Sotheby’s, London, 12 April 1995, lot 41, as ‘EdwardWortley
Montagu Wearing Brown Coat’;
Private collection
A portrait of the siter’s wife, Mary Wortley Montagu, of a similar size and also by Jervas sold through
Whyte’s (28 September 2015 as lot 25). Mary was the subject of two works by Jervas one of which can be
found in the collection of the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin (NGI.4341).
Jervas was an Irish born artist and successful portrait painter who succeeded his master, Sir Godfrey
Kneller, as Principal Painter to King George I; a position he retained under King George II.
Sir EdwardWortley-Montagu (8 February 1678 - 22 January 1761) was British Ambassador to the
Ottoman Empire, husband of the writer Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and father of the writer and traveller
EdwardWortley Montagu.
Son of Sidney Wortley Montagu and grandson of Edward Montagu, 1st Earl of Sandwich, a Cambridge
graduate and lawyer, Wortley Montagu was educated at Westminster School, Trinity College, Cambridge
(1693) and trained in the law at the Middle Temple (1693), was called to the bar in 1699 and entered the
Inner Temple in 1706.
He was best known for his correspondence with, seduction of, and elopement with the aristocratic writer,
Mary, daughter of Evelyn Pierrepont, 1st Duke of Kingston-upon-Hull. They married in 1712. He
succeeded his father in 1727, inheriting Wortley Hall.
Montagu himself was a prominent Whig politician, and was MP for Huntingdon before eventually
becoming a Lord Commissioner of the Treasury from 1714 to 1715. He was elected by the Levant
Company on the king’s nomination on 10 May 1716. He arrived at Adrianople on 13 March 1717. He was
not Ambassador to the Ottoman Porte in Constantinople before he was recalled in October 1717. As
Ambassador, he was charged with pursuing the ongoing negotiations between the Ottomans and the
Habsburg Empire. He left Turkey on 15 July 1718 and for some time travelled in the East. Upon his
return from Constantinople, he fell out with the Whig hierarchy but remained a Member of Parliament for
Huntingdon (1722-1734) and Peterborough (1734 until his death in 1761).
€6,000-€8,000 (£5,450-£7,270 approx.)
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