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    Museum collections / Art Institute of Chicago
    Thomas Lister and Family at Gisburne Park
    Arthur Devis. Thomas Lister and Family at Gisburne Park, 1740–41. The Art Institute of Chicago. Public domain (CC0).

    Public collection via the Art Institute of Chicago

    AT-00001226

    Thomas Lister and Family at Gisburne Park

    by Arthur Devis

    View at the Art Institute of Chicago

    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.

    Open-access museum data

    This record comes from the open-access collection data that the Art Institute of Chicago publishes for unrestricted use (Creative Commons Zero). Art Trackers shows a selection of the museum's published fields. The Art Institute of Chicago is not an Art Trackers client and has not reviewed or endorsed this page; the museum's own website is the authoritative record.

    • View this work at the Art Institute of Chicago
    • The Art Institute of Chicago: open-access terms

    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

    More by Arthur Devis in museum collections

    • John Thomlinson and His Family

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      Public collection via the Art Institute of Chicago

      AT-00000167
    • Sir John Shaw and his Family in the Park at Eltham Lodge, Kent

      Arthur Devis

      1761 · Painting

      Public collection via the Art Institute of Chicago

      AT-00001227
    • Portrait of a Man

      Arthur Devis

      1763 · Painting

      Public collection via the Art Institute of Chicago

      AT-00001228

    Open-access museum record · AT-00001226

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