BRITISH SCHOOL, c. 1620
Portrait of Thomas Morgan of Machen (b. 1568)
inscribed: ‘Aetatis Suae. 52 / Thos. Morgan of Machen’ (upper left) and ‘Ano Dm. 1620’ in the upper right
oil on panel
42 x 32 inches (106.7 x 81.3 cm)
Sold to Tredegar House, Newport, Wales
PROVENANCE
By descent in the Morgan family of Tredegar House, Newport, Wales to Evan Morgan,
2nd Viscount Tredegar until sold
Christie’s, London, 20 October 1961, lot 7.
Mr. and Mrs. Russell Speights, by whom given to the
Cheekwood Museum of Art, Nashville, Tennessee, until 2005.
LITERATURE
J. Steegman, Portraits in Welsh Houses, II, Cardiff, 1962, p. 162, no. 8.
EXHIBITED
Cardiff, National Museum of Wales, Temporary Exhibition of Portraits, February – April
1934, no. 4 (lent by Viscount Tredegar).
The sitter in the present portrait is identified, by a near-contemporary inscription, as ‘Thomas Morgan of Machen’ who was 52 years old in 1620. Thomas Morgan was probably a nephew of Thomas Morgan of Machen (c. 1534 – c.1603) who married Elizabeth, daughter of Roger Bodenham. This branch of the Morgan family, who owned estates at Machen, near Caerphilly in South Wales, was closely related to the Morgans of Tredegar, near Newport. The present work remained with an important group of early Morgan family portraits at Tredegar House until they were dispersed at auction in 1961.