Thomas Lister and Family at Gisburne Park

1. Presumably commissioned by the principal sitter, Thomas Lister (died 1745) of Gisburne Park, near Clitheroe, Lancashire; by descent to Thomas Lister, 4th Baron Ribblesdale (died 1925), Gisburne Park, until at least 1913 [see 1853 printed inventory and Denny 1913]. Emily Crane Chadbourne, Washington, D.C., by 1932; on loan to the Art Institute, 1932-1951; given to the Art Institute, 1951; offered for sale, Sotheby’s, London, November 18, 1987, lot 33, bought in and Sotheby’s, New York, January 12, 1989, lot 148, bought in.

Recorded by Art Institute of Chicago.

• Detroit Institute of Arts, English Conversation Pieces of the Eighteenth Century, 1948, no. 22, as Joseph Francis Nollekens, Family Group in a Landscape.
• New Haven, Yale Center for British Art, The Conversation Piece: Arthur Devis and His Contemporaries, 1980 (catalogue by Ellen Gates D’Oench), no. 4.

• Catalogue of Paintings at Gisburne Park Belonging to the Right Hon. Lord Ribblesdale (Clitheroe, 1853), p. 8, lobby, no. 11.
• Rev. Henry Lyttelton Lyster Denny, Memorials of an Ancient House: A history of the Family of Lister or Lyster (Edinburgh, 1913), p. 134, ill. opp. p. 136.
• Edgar P. Richardson, “Conversation for the Eye,” Art News 47 (May 1948), p. 57, ill.
• “The Editor’s Attic: English Conversation Pieces,” Antiques 54 (1948), p. 118, ill.
• Letter from Hans Huth, “Collectors’ Questions: Georgian Family Group,” Country Life 126, 3275 (December 10, 1059), p. 1143, ill.
• Letter from Lt.-Col. Frederick Lister, “Correspondence: Georgian Family Group,” Country Life 127, 3279 (January 7, 1960), pp. 29-30.
• Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings in The Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection (Chicago, 1961), p. 59.
• Ellen Gates D’Oench, “Arthur Devis (1712-1787): Master of the Georgian Conversation Piece” Ph.D. diss., Yale Univrsity, 1979 (Ann Arbor, Michigan, University Microfilms, 1984), pp. 45-47, 65, 141, 182 n. 31, 274, under no. 8, 367, under no. 103, pp. 367-69, no. 104, 394, under no. 125, 458, under no. 205, 470, under no. 223, fig. 27.
• John Harris, The Artist and the Country House: A History of Country House and Garden View Painting in Britain, 1540-1870 (London, 1979), p. 218, no. 235, ill.
• Polite Society by Arthur Devis, 1712-1787: Portraits of the English Country Gentleman and His Family (exh. cat., Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston, and National Portrait Gallery, London, 1983-84), pp. 12, 29-30, 41.
• Geoffrey Beard, The Compleat Gentleman: Five Centuries of Aristocratic Life (New York, 1993), p. 66, fig. 42.
• Malcolm Warner in Susan Wise and Malcolm Warner, French and British Paintings from 1600 to 1800 in The Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, 1996), pp. 204-207, ill.

John Thomlinson and His Family

Art Institute of Chicago

Sir John Shaw and his Family in the Park at Eltham Lodge, Kent

Art Institute of Chicago

Portrait of a Man

Art Institute of Chicago

Invitation

Art Institute of Chicago

Silver Sun

Art Institute of Chicago

Swing Music (Louis Armstrong)

Art Institute of Chicago

Nature Symbolized No. 2

Art Institute of Chicago

A Reasonable Facsimile

Art Institute of Chicago

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