Concordia Magazine 2025

Lost and Found Isabel Hesketh, School Archivist, uncovers treasures in the School’s history and reflects on the artists and sitters in the portrait collection.

In 1674 a new portrait of White was commissioned by the Company; it has been attributed to the Master of the Company, Robert Mallory, who in 7 May 1674 was ‘ordered to be forthwith drawne from head to foote by our Master’s owne hand to be set up and remain in the said Chappel as before the late dreadful fire’. 6 Mallory is not a well-known portrait artist of the time and, although he is said to have produced at least one other portrait, no other examples of his work can be found in any national collections. 7 The full length portrait, in its heavily gilded frame, was hung in the rebuilt School premises at Suffolk Lane from 1675 onwards. It was later moved into a position above the fireplace in the Library at Charterhouse Square, subsequently moved to the Dining Room, and finally in the 1950s to the Library at Sandy Lodge, which was ‘not met with universal approval’. 8 This portrait is not currently on display at the School. At Merchant Taylors’ today, portrait paintings are displayed in both public and private spaces. Eleven portraits of Head Masters are on display in the Exam Hall, and others are in the Reception area, the Great Hall lobby and the Senior Common Room. A three-quarter length portrait of Spencer Leeson may be found in the Leeson meeting room and photographic and drawn portraits of the Governing Body are displayed in the Geoffrey Holland meeting room.

The tradition of portraiture at Merchant Taylors’ goes back to the time of the School’s foundation in the late 16th century. An inventory dated 1609 at the Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors’ mentions that two portraits of Sir Thomas White, one of the School’s founders, were displayed at the Company Hall. By 1618 the inventory listed just one portrait of Sir Thomas, and it has been suggested that the second might have been presented by the Company to the School at Suffolk Lane. 1 We know that a portrait of White was destroyed in the Great Fire of London at the School’s first premises in Suffolk Lane, but we do not know its date or artist. The art historian Robert Tittler, in his essay ‘Three Portraits by John de Critz for the Merchant Taylors’ Company’, discusses the possibility that a portrait of White owned by the Livery Company and destroyed by fire was the ‘prototype’ portrait of White painted from life in 1566, one of many portraits of him that were reproduced in the latter part of the 16th and early 17th centuries. 2 Whether this portrait was the same as the one in the School is not known. Sir Thomas White was one of the wealthiest members of the Merchant Taylors’ Company in the 16th century and the most widely portrayed man of his age outside royalty and the courts. 3 Portraits of him may be found today in towns and cities throughout the country, all municipalities that were beneficiaries of his endowments: Oxford (and St John’s College, which he founded) as well as Canterbury, Coventry, Salisbury, Norwich, Reading, Bristol, Gloucester, Chester, Southampton, Winchester, Exeter, Lincoln and Nottingham. 4 How exactly the Merchant Taylor portraits of White fit into the story of White portraiture as a whole is complex, particularly because the Company records for the period 1557–69 do not exist. 5 Nevertheless, with the other portraits of White, they play an important part in the development of English civic portraiture in the 17th century.

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Sir Thomas White, 1674: Robert Mallory