I wonder if we have any art experts who can help solve a puzzle….

When James Banks Stanhope became an adult and then came into full possession of Revesby’s old house, he decided to sweep it away and build a new one. However, the sweeping away was perhaps not done carefully enough….

Once whatever had been deemed valuable had been taken away, the rest of the disposables were put up for auction in 1845. Edward Tewson of Boston, an auctioneer and valuer, came along to the sale and bought a large old cupboard from the housekeeper’s room. When he examined this in detail, he found that the back panel of the cupboard was a picture painted on an oak panel, though it was somewhat damaged by having shelves nailed to it. He took out the shelves and found a wonderful painting containing twenty two figures.

The painting was soon identified as showing ‘The Adoration of the Shepherds’ and there were rumours that it was by Raphael. Rumours also reported that it had once been the altar piece at Revesby church and had been hidden during the time of the Civil war to save it from puritans. No-one was really sure, of course, so Tewson sent the painting off to London to be repaired and to be studied.

By early 1846 the painting had been identified as by Frans (or ‘Francis’) Floris, apparently known as ‘the Raphael of Flanders’, and had been sold to a Mr Radclyffe of London. Nonetheless, Tewson clung onto it for a while and arranged for it be on show in Boston at six pence a view.

However something seems to have gone wrong with the sale to Radclyffe, because in July 1847 Tewson was again ‘showing’ it in Boston, but this time for free, and was offering it for five hundred guineas – whilst also auctioning a number of other ‘Old Masters’. Of course the story is rather complicated, for Floris’s original painting was for Antwerp Cathedral and that painting is now in a collection in Antwerp.

So what was Tewson’s painting? Presumably Radclyffe backed out when the painting turned out to not be quite what he thought. But what happened to it after that? Sadly for us the subject is a very common one (Manchester alone has at least two) but a search has produced no reference to Revesby as provenance of a painting of this name….

So, does anyone have a clue what happened to the Revesby ‘Old Master’?
Adrian Gray, historian