This month we bring you two watercolours instead of one, as they form a contrasting pair.

The Passengers of a Heavy Coach Dining at Coventry (around 1790) by W.C. Temple

Watercolour and black ink on paper

Donated by Miss E. Flage, 1977

The Subject

If that is a roast chicken on the end of the fork, it is extraordinarily small! Presumably this was the main meat course served up to these travellers on the heavy (slow) coach when they arrived at this Coventry inn. Would this perhaps be an account of a real incident suffered by this amateur artist?

In 1781 the Coventry to Birmingham Road was considered 'despicable beyond description'. The inn where they stayed would have been one of several staging posts on the Coventry High Street: the Craven Arms, The Pickering Vaults or the Rose & Crown.

The artist would seem to have one foot metaphorically in step with 'ordinary' people and one in step with the priviledged because the Herbert also has a scene of an utterly different lifestyle by him:

A Certain Fashionable Lounger (around 1790) by W.C. Temple

Watercolour and black ink on paper

Donated by Miss E. Flage, 1977

The Herbert additionally has this watercolour by the same artist. The two were given as a pair. It is inscribed:

'A Certain Fashionable Lounger. Dedicated most respectfully to the Honle. John Luttrell Olmius by his obedient humble servant E. Blunt.'

On the front of this watercolour 'W.C. Temple fecit' is written in pencil. This shows that the artist was W.C. Temple. He seems to have been only an amateur artist, and so far has not been more closely identified.

The person to whom this work is dedicated was -

John Luttrell-Olmius, 3rd Earl of Carhampton (1741-1829) (Irish Peerage), the son of Simon Luttrell. In 1821 he inherited the wealth of his notorious older brother Henry. Henry had carried out a brutal military campaign in Ireland, and owned what had been a slave estate in the West Indies.

The 'fashionable lounger' in question could well be Sir Simeon Stuart, 4th Baronet Stuart, of Hartley Mauduit near Southampton. Simeon married Lady Frances Maria Luttrell, daughter of John Luttrell-Olmius, in 1789. He certainly had wealth because his father had died in 1782, passing on the title to him. This watercolour would then be a jaded comment about his new son-in-law, the year after he had married into the family.