Roy Precious - Antiques & Fine Art has dated this piece to the 17th Century.
Baptised on 3 March 1634, he was the eldest surviving son of landowner and politician Richard Catlin (1583 – 1662) of Kirby Cane and his second wife Dorothy (1605 – 1672), daughter of landowner and politician Sir Henry Nevill of Billingbear and his wife Anne, daughter of Henry Killigrew. His father, who supported the King in the English Civil War, had been disabled from sitting in Parliament in 1644 and suffered sequestration of his estate, but was discharged without fine in 1647. His older half-brother Thomas Catlin died fighting for the Royalist side in the Second Battle of Newbury in 1644 . In 1650, he entered King's College, Cambridge.
In 1658 in London he married his first wife Dorothea, daughter of the judge and politician Sir Thomas Bedingfield and his wife Elizabeth. After her early death he married Elizabeth, daughter of Robert Houghton of Ranworth and his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Corbet, 1st Baronet, of Sprowston, but she died in 1681. His third marriage was to Mary, sister of Sir Charles Blois, 1st Baronet and daughter of Sir William Blois of Grundisburgh and his first wife Martha. In the first two marriages there were three sons and a daughter, but none lived long.
At the Restoration in 1660 he joined the Norfolk militia, initially as a captain of cavalry and rising later to major. In 1661 he was appointed a commissioner for tax assessment for both Norfolk and Suffolk and in 1662 when he inherited the estates of Kirby Cane and Wingfield Castle on the death of his father, he was knighted. In 1668 he was appointed Justice of the Peace for Norfolk and in 1680 for Suffolk as well, adding the rank of Deputy Lieutenant for Norfolk in 1676 and Suffolk in 1680.
In the 1685 general election he was unopposed as one of the two members for the city of Norwich and was listed among the opposition to the supporters of the Catholic King, James II. Unsympathetic to the political ambitions of the Catholic party, he opposed the repeal of the penal laws against Catholics and dissenters but was not against some relaxation. As an opponent of the King's absolute rule, he was stripped of his local offices, and when these were restored in October 1688 he refused to sit next to Catholic office holders. In the Convention Parliament of 1689 he was fairly active, being appointed to 15 committees.
He did not stand in the 1690 general election, retiring from national politics. Dying in July 1702, at Wingfield Castle, he was buried at Kirby Cane and succeeded by his younger brother Richard Catlin V.
JOHN HAYLS (1600-1679) also Hailes, was an English Baroque-era portrait painter, principally known for his portrait of Samuel Pepys. Hayls was a contemporary and rival of Sir Peter Lely and Samuel Cooper.
Pepys was so pleased with his wife's portrait, that he commissioned a portrait of himself and also persuaded his father Thomas Pepys to sit for the artist. Pepys also mentioned that Hayls painted the actor Joseph Harris as Henry V.
Hayls also painted portraits of Colonel John Russell (third son of Francis Russell, 4th Earl of Bedford), Lady Diana Russell, and the poet Thomas Flatman. He was known as a good copyist of the works of Van Dyck. He lived in Southampton Street, Bloomsbury, London, for some years, but then moved to a house in Long Acre, where he died suddenly in 1679.
SIZE: 35.5 x 30.5 inches inc. frame.
PROVENANCE: Wingfield Castle, Sussex, then by descent to the Lords Berners of Ashwellthorpe Hall, thence to Faringdon House. (see last image).
Roy Precious - Antiques & Fine Art has dated this piece to the 17th Century.
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Pair of Portraits of Sir Neville and Lady Catlin, C.1658; Attributed to John Hayls.
