Lady William Henry Cavendish Bentinck (d.1843)
The Bentinck Drawings Collection
Exhibition and publication details
References and further reading

 

Lady William Henry Cavendish Bentinck (d.1843)

Lady Mary Acheson was the second daughter of the first Earl of Gosford. In 1803 she married William Henry Cavendish Bentinck (1774-1839), the second son of the third Duke of Portland. Little is known about Lady William Cavendish Bentinck except through the life of her husband, Lord Bentinck, who became the Governor-General of India between 1827-1835.

Lord Bentinck started his working life as an army officer and in 1803, at the age of 29, was appointed Governor of Madras. It is not known if Mary accompanied her husband to India, but his appointment was swiftly terminated in 1807 following a local uprising that resulted in the loss of many lives. On returning to England in 1808, Bentinck joined the army in Portugal and served in Spain and Sicily until he was recalled to England in 1815.

Bentinck then served as the Member of Parliament for Glasgow until he was appointed Governor General of India and Governor of Bengal in 1827. It is presumed that Lady Bentinck was in India with her husband when he was Governor General as the album of bird drawings is dated 1833. It is clear that she had an interest in zoology. She donated skins of Himalayan birds to the museum of the Zoological Society of London c.1833 and later some unspecified specimens from Australia c.1836. Lady Bentinck died in 1843.

The Bentinck Drawings Collection

The album of 61 paintings of birds is believed to have been commissioned by Lady Bentinck and appears to be the work of one person. The unknown artist whom she chose to illustrate the birds was undoubtedly a local person, who had the ability to paint birds taking the utmost care to depict the feathers and represent the subtle colour changes using fine brush strokes.

All of the 61 birds are positioned on the ground or perched on branches. The subjects themselves are somewhat stiff as was the traditional manner of depicting birds in the early nineteenth century, but the beauty of the artist’s rendering of his subjects elevates them to fine examples of natural history art. It is likely most of these drawings were made from dead birds. As it is recorded that in 1833 Lady Bentinck donated 67 birdskins from the Himalayas to the Zoological Society of London, it is possible that these paintings are the drawings of those same birds.

The depiction of these Himalayan birds coincided with the publication of John Gould’s first book, A Century of birds hitherto unfigured from the Himalaya Mountains (1830-1833).

Exhibition and publication details

This collection of drawings has not previously been displayed to the public.

References and further reading

Arbuthnot, A. J. (1885). Lord William Cavendish Bentinck. Dictionary of National Biography, 4, pp.292-297.

Jackson, C. E. (1999) Dictionary of bird artists of the world. Antique Collectors' Club, Woodbridge, p.155.