Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington and 4th Earl of Cork, and His Wife Dorothy Boyle, Countess of Burlington, with Three Children
Jean-Baptiste van Loo, 1739, oil on canvas
This painting of Richard Boyle, his wife Dorothy Savile and three children by French painter Jean-Baptiste van Loo is critical to understanding the historical representation of the themes of gender, ethnicity and empire, as explored in our 2024 Picturing Childhood exhibition.
It represents differing experiences of childhood. We can see three children – two of whom we know a lot about. Dorothy (eldest daughter, standing behind) and Charlotte (youngest daughter, pointing to music in the foreground) were brought up in an environment full of the arts. We know details of the daughters’ lives including whom they married (Charlotte married the future 4th Duke of Devonshire) and when they died.
We know less about the third child, who will have had a different experience growing up. We wanted to find out more about this child's identity, and his presence in the Burlington household. We commissioned Dr Edward Town from Yale Center for British Art, United States, to do some further research.
Since 2004, he has been known as James Cambridge. This name connects to a record dated 1739 of money paid to a tailor by the Countess of Burlington for a coat and vest for James Cambridge 'the black'.
New research confirms that James' surname was Cumberlidge and suggests that his father, Thomas, was a man who worked in a household near the Boyle family home in Chiswick, London.
In the late 1750s, James took up a post as a musician in the royal household (when he was around 30 years old). By the 1780s, James was living in the parish of Walton on Thames, Surrey. His son, also named James, was baptised there in 1781 and in 1861, aged 79, and was recorded in the census as an agricultural labourer.
Through Dr Town’s research we have found out more detail about James’ life. This is, however, an incomplete story and our work to find out more will continue.
Listen
Listen to two responses to this portrait.
Inaaya Abbas, a pupil from Athelstan Primary School in Sheffield, tells us what she would like to find out more about.
Dr Edward Town, who has been researching the life story of James Cumberlidge, shares some of his findings.
