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Portrait Of John Hewley Baines, Signed & Dated 1697; John Verelst (1648-1734) Antique Painting

Object description :

"Portrait Of John Hewley Baines, Signed & Dated 1697; John Verelst (1648-1734) Antique Painting"

In this charming large portrait, a young gentleman has been depicted holding a baton with a red ribbon in an outdoor setting. The style of portrait was popular in England and the pose was somewhat of an accepted standard for an upper-class English gentleman at the time. By tradition the sitter is known as John Hewely Baines (1693-1760) and this is annotated on a presentation label on the frame. The artist has portrayed the sitter looking a little older, which is not unusual.

The Hewley family and the Baines family had resided in Wistow from about the 14^th century. From the 1660s Sir John Hewley (born in Wistow in 1619, died c.1695), lawyer of Gray's Inn (admitted in 1638) and Whig MP for Pontefract and also York, began buying land at Naburn and in 1662 he purchased the Bell estate. The property had been in the York families of Bell and North and he demolished their earlier mansion house in 1679 to erect a new Bell Hall, just 500 yards from the River Ouse.

Sir John was a puritan, but at the Restoration, like his fellow townsman, Lord Fairfax, and General Monk, a Royalist and his house asserts that fact. Nonconformist in religion, he may have done this to get around the law that prevented nonconformist ministers from residing within five miles of York. Wood panelling in the family estate Bell Hall is reputed to hide cavities in the walls where they hid Presbyterian ministers. He was married to Sarah Woolryche (1627-1710) and the couple had two sons but they both died young. As a result when Sir John and Sarah died they left a large bequest to Sir John’s sister's grandson, the sitter in our portrait. Sir John’s sister, Margaret Hewley (1620-1659) married John Baines (b.1623). The Hewley’s and the Baines’ had been connected by frequent marriages and territorial juxtaposition at Wistow, near Selby, since the 14^th century when their ancestors settled their side by side and since that time there had been no break in the family. By this means, the family estate of Bell Hall changed hands from the Hewley to the Baines family. It is unusual in being a house that has never changed hands by purchase.

Hewley Baines was born in 1693 and therefore was just 17 when he inherited. He married Lucy Masterman, probably around 1720, and they had five children, four of whom lived to adulthood. Their eldest son, Hewley Baines (b.1721), succeeded to the Bell Hall estates when his father died in the same year as his mother in 1760. The last descendant, another John Baines, had still retained circa 200 acres in 1971.

John Verelst (1648-1734), also known as Johannes or Jan, was born in The Hague and was a Dutch Golden Age painter. He was the youngest of three sons of the painter Pieter Hermansz Verelst. His older brothers were Simon (considered to be the most accomplished, fashionable and expensive practitioner of flower painting working in London in the later 17^th century) and Herman who forged a career as a painter of portraits at the Hapsburg court in Vienna. Herman’s son Cornelius was a painter and his daughter Maria (1680-1744) and she ran a very successful practice mainly of portraits. All three sons first studied with their father from a young age in The Hague.

John Verelst migrated to London, the exact date is unknown but it was as early as 1691 (he was listed as a witness in London in 1691). There he specialised in portraits and he notoriously depicted the ‘Four Mohawk Kings’ which were a group of ethnic leaders who visited Queen Anne in 1710 from the Province of New York in North America. Leeds Museums and Galleries has a portrait by John Verelst of Charles Brandling and also that of his wife Margaret, both dated 1698.

Provenance: By direct descent within the Hewley Baines of Bell Hall, Naburn, Near York to John Hewley Baines of Latimer House, Heckington, Lincolnshire for over 200 years

Literature: Paper of the Baines family of Bell Hall, Naburn, Hull History Centre
Niederlandisches Kunstler-Lexikon, Dr Alfred von Wurzbach, 1910, p.766
Country Life, 17th June, 1922, p.820-823

Measurements: Height 118cm, Width 94cm framed (Height 46.5”, Width 37” framed)