Superb Pair of Portraits, Sir Howe and Lady Hicks C.1740, by Henry Pickering.

A superb pair of portraits, almost certainly commissioned to celebrate the wedding of the two sitters. The paintings are in fine condition and in their original carved and giltwood frames. Sir Howe Hicks 6th Baronet (1722-1801) and Martha, Lady Hicks (1717-1802).

Howe Hicks was a grandson of Sir Michael Hicks, youngest brother of Sir William Hicks, second baronet. He inherited the baronetcy from his cousin Sir John Baptist Hicks, the 5th baronet, who died without issue. He married Martha Browne, daughter of his guardian the Rev, john Browne, in 1739, and they had 10 children.

The Hicks, later Hicks Beach family, descends from Robert Hicks, a textile merchant in London. His third son Baptist Hicks was created Viscount Campden in 1628 and is the ancestor of the Earls of Gainsborough. Robert Hicks's eldest son Sir Michael Hicks was private secretary to William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley. His only son William Hicks was created a baronet, of Beverston in the County of Gloucester, in the Baronetage of England in 1619. He later represented Marlow and Tewkesbury in the House of Commons. The line of his eldest son, the second Baronet, failed in 1768 on the death of the latter's grandson, the fourth Baronet. The late Baronet was succeeded by his cousin, the fifth Baronet. He was the son of Charles Hicks.

On his death in 1792 this line of the family also failed and the title passed to his cousin, the sixth Baronet. He was succeeded by his son, the seventh Baronet. When he died in 1834 the title was inherited by his great-nephew, the eighth Baronet. He was the grandson of Michael Hicks Beach, younger brother of the seventh Baronet, who had assumed the additional surname of Beach when he married Henrietta Maria Beach, only surviving daughter and heiress of William Beach of Netheravon, Wiltshire. Hicks Beach briefly represented Gloucestershire East in Parliament in 1854. He was succeeded by his son, the aforementioned ninth Baronet, who was elevated to the peerage as Viscount St Aldwyn in 1906 and created Earl St Aldwyn in 1915.

HENRY PICKERING (1720-circa 1775) was a fashionable and gifted portrait artist working in the style of the great Thomas Hudson. Hudson and Pickering were both known to use the famous drapery painter Joseph van Aken.

He travelled to Italy to learn from the old masters and seems to have returned to England, and London, by 1740. By the 1750s he seems to have worked as an itinerant portrait painter travelling around the country, eventually settling in Manchester in 1759.

SIZE: 37 x 32 inches including the frame.

PROVENANCE: By descent.

LITERATURE 'A Cotswold Family: Hicks and Hicks Beach' published in 1909 by Mrs William Hicks Beach; it traces the Gloucestershire roots of the Hicks family back to the 14th century.