Thomas Lister and Family at Gisburne Park

Presumably commissioned by the principal sitter, Thomas Lister (died 1745) of Gisburne Park, near Clitheroe, Lancashire

Catalogue of Paintings at Gisburne Park Belonging to the Right Hon. Lord Ribblesdale (Clitheroe, 1853), p. 8, lobby, no. 11.

Beth Fowkes Tobin, Colonizing Nature: The Tropics in British Arts and Letters, 1760-1820 (Philadelphia, 2005), p. 83, fig. 5.

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.

given to the Art Institute, 1951

Detroit Institute of Arts, English Conversation Pieces of the Eighteenth Century, 1948, no. 22, as Joseph Francis Nollekens, Family Group in a Landscape.

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.

on loan to the Art Institute, 1932-1951

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

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.

Letter from Hans Huth, “Collectors’ Questions: Georgian Family Group,” Country Life 126, 3275 (December 10, 1059), p. 1143, ill.

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.

Geoffrey Beard, The Compleat Gentleman: Five Centuries of Aristocratic Life (New York, 1993), p. 66, fig. 42.

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.

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.

New Haven, Yale Center for British Art, The Conversation Piece: Arthur Devis and His Contemporaries, 1980 (catalogue by Ellen Gates D’Oench), no. 4.

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.

Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings in The Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection (Chicago, 1961), p. 59.