The Leviathan of Wealth.
The Duke and Duchess of Sutherland, owners of 1.5 million acres of Britain. Two paintings at Abbot Hall, along with a Romney of the Duchess as a teenager.
Some research notes -
George Granville Leveson-Gower, Viscount Trentham, Earl Gower, Marquess of Stafford, and 1st Duke of Sutherland, by Thomas Lawrence.
Approaching the themes of place and identity; debates concerning land ownership; engaging in a dialogue with history through art.
Context:
George Leveson-Gower married Elizabeth Sutherland (19th Countess of Sutherland) in 1785.
Their union made them among the greatest landowners by extent in Britain. For much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Sutherland Estates were the largest landed estates in western Europe; 1.1 million acres made up the Scottish estates, nearly the whole county of Sutherland, with a further c300,000 acres in England. Following their marriage, Gower was appointed as British ambassador to France and the couple lived in Paris until the French revolution, their lifestyle was a large drain on their finances. In 1803, Gower inherited the estates of the Duke of Bridgewater and his wealth earned from investments in infrastructure relating to the industrial revolution such as canals. Such was the immense fortune now in the possession of the couple that it was quipped that Leveson-Gower was the ‘leviathan of wealth’. This money allowed the couple to begin improvements to their vast Scottish estates. In practice, it was Elizabeth who oversaw the management of their Scottish estates and she travelled north each season to stay at her ancestral home of Dunrobin castle (where Romney’s painting of the Gower family resided until it was purchased for Abbot Hall in 1970. Romney also painted the countess herself in 1782 (see opposite)).
etween 1809 and 1820 the couple gained notoriety for the Sutherland clearances when thousands of their tenants were removed to make way for sheep, completely dismantling the social make up of the region and leaving vast swathes of the north of Scotland virtually devoid of people. It was hoped that the removals would be part of an economic transformation of the region. Some of the removals entailed the burning of vacant houses to prevent tenants from returning, which created an enduring image in highland culture, and which dogged the couple at the time causing them to lose the goodwill of many erstwhile supporters. Their actions remain controversial and are remembered bitterly by those whose ancestors were dispossessed.