George Howard, 9th Earl of Carlisle (1843-1911)
Provenance
Bonhams, 19 November 1997, lot 43;
Earl of Airlie
This study was made for Howard's 1868 painting Helen, wife of the 8th Lord Ogilvy, during the Burning of Airlie Castle by the Earl of Argyll, July 7th 1641. Archibald Campbell, the Earl of Argyll, at the head of a Parliamentarian army, burned the Castle of Airlie in 1640 as part of a long-running feud with the Earls of Airlie. George Howard's wife Rosalind Stanley, whom he had married in 1864, was the sister of the then Lady Airlie.
The events depicted gave rise to the traditional song The Bonnie House o'Airly,the last verse of which seems to have been the inspiration of the picture:
Clouds o' smoke and flames sae hie
Soon left the wa's but barely,
And she's laid her doon on that hill to dee,
When she saw the burnin' o' Airly.
Not a cheerful subject, but a mournful, elegaic one. The finished painting hangs in the new Castle (late 18th Century) which still belongs to the Earls of Airlie.