The sitter was the third and only surviving son of Richard Child, 1^st Earl Tylney. A good-natured and generous man, he suffered from persistent gossip about his private life – a contemporary noting that he was unable to ‘resist the temptations & instigations of a passion, contrary to reason & at which nature shudders.’¹

Perhaps for this reason he left England for Italy in 1752 and settled in Florence for the remainder of his life. He became a leading member of the Anglo-Florentine community, living near the Carmine in a ‘pretty house [with] a small garden where he [kept] a great quantity of golden pheasants.’² During the winter months, he preferred to live in Naples and died there in 1784.

Ingamells described Thomas Patch as 'an intelligent and original artist with a sharp eye and louche disposition' who spent thirty-five years living in Italy between 1747 and 1782.³ Surviving drawings are very rare, particularly in private hands. Patch knew Lord Tylney well and also included him in an oil painting entitled British Gentlemen at Sir Horace Mann's Home in Florence (circa 1763-5), a work now held at The Yale Center for British Art⁴ (fig. 1).

See also the following lot, for a remarkable, rare series of prints by Patch, gently caricaturing the various English 'Milords' that he encountered in Florence and Rome.

1. Ingamells and Ford, loc. cit.

2. Ibid

3. Ibid

4. J. Black, Italy and the Grand Tour, New Haven 2003, p. 133