
Public collection via the Art Institute of Chicago
AT-00001226Thomas Lister and Family at Gisburne Park
by Arthur Devis
Provenance
Presumably commissioned by the principal sitter, Thomas Lister (died 1745) of Gisburne Park, near Clitheroe, Lancashire; by descent to Thomas Lister, 4th Baron Ribblesdale (died 1925), Gisburne Park, until at least 1913 [see 1853 printed inventory and Denny 1913]. Emily Crane Chadbourne, Washington, D.C., by 1932; on loan to the Art Institute, 1932-1951; given to the Art Institute, 1951; offered for sale, Sotheby’s, London, November 18, 1987, lot 33, bought in and Sotheby’s, New York, January 12, 1989, lot 148, bought in.
Exhibition history
Detroit Institute of Arts, English Conversation Pieces of the Eighteenth Century, 1948, no. 22, as Joseph Francis Nollekens, Family Group in a Landscape. New Haven, Yale Center for British Art, The Conversation Piece: Arthur Devis and His Contemporaries, 1980 (catalogue by Ellen Gates D’Oench), no. 4.
Publications
Catalogue of Paintings at Gisburne Park Belonging to the Right Hon. Lord Ribblesdale (Clitheroe, 1853), p. 8, lobby, no. 11. Rev. Henry Lyttelton Lyster Denny, Memorials of an Ancient House: A history of the Family of Lister or Lyster (Edinburgh, 1913), p. 134, ill. opp. p. 136. Edgar P. Richardson, “Conversation for the Eye,” Art News 47 (May 1948), p. 57, ill. “The Editor’s Attic: English Conversation Pieces,” Antiques 54 (1948), p. 118, ill. Letter from Hans Huth, “Collectors’ Questions: Georgian Family Group,” Country Life 126, 3275 (December 10, 1059), p. 1143, ill. Letter from Lt.-Col. Frederick Lister, “Correspondence: Georgian Family Group,” Country Life 127, 3279 (January 7, 1960), pp. 29-30. Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings in The Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection (Chicago, 1961), p. 59. Ellen Gates D’Oench, “Arthur Devis (1712-1787): Master of the Georgian Conversation Piece” Ph.D. diss., Yale Univrsity, 1979 (Ann Arbor, Michigan, University Microfilms, 1984), pp. 45-47, 65, 141, 182 n. 31, 274, under no. 8, 367, under no. 103, pp. 367-69, no. 104, 394, under no. 125, 458, under no. 205, 470, under no. 223, fig. 27. John Harris, The Artist and the Country House: A History of Country House and Garden View Painting in Britain, 1540-1870 (London, 1979), p. 218, no. 235, ill. Polite Society by Arthur Devis, 1712-1787: Portraits of the English Country Gentleman and His Family (exh. cat., Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston, and National Portrait Gallery, London, 1983-84), pp. 12, 29-30, 41. Geoffrey Beard, The Compleat Gentleman: Five Centuries of Aristocratic Life (New York, 1993), p. 66, fig. 42. Malcolm Warner in Susan Wise and Malcolm Warner, French and British Paintings from 1600 to 1800 in The Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, 1996), pp. 204-207, ill. Beth Fowkes Tobin, “The English Garden Conversation Piece in India” in The Global Eighteenth Century, ed. Felicity A. Nussbaum (Baltimore and London, 2003), pp. 165-67, fig. 11.2. Beth Fowkes Tobin, Colonizing Nature: The Tropics in British Arts and Letters, 1760-1820 (Philadelphia, 2005), p. 83, fig. 5.
Data retrieved from the Art Institute of Chicago on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Arthur Devis (English, 1712–1787)
- Date
- 1740–41
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 115.1 × 103.8 cm (45 5/16 × 40 7/8 in.); (Framed): 133.4 × 121.7 × 11.8 cm (52 1/2 × 47 7/8 × 4 5/8 in.)
- Type
- Painting
- Classification
- oil on canvas
- Style
- 18th Century
- Place
- England
- Department
- Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Credit line
- Gift of Emily Crane Chadbourne
- Accession no.
- 1951.203
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Open-access museum record · AT-00001226
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