Description
Group portrait of Spencer Ponsonby-Fane wearing a beige suit and Frederick Ponsonby in green coat, together with John Loraine Baldwin seated in a bath chair. All wear I Zingari accessories in Club colours of red, gold and black.
Display caption
English School, 19th Century
The Founders of I Zingari (1897)
Oil on canvas
Group portrait showing Spencer Ponsonby-Fane left and his brother the Earl of Bessborough, together with John Loraine Baldwin seated in a bath chair. All wear I Zingari accessories.
I Zingari (literally `The Gypsies’) is the oldest wandering club in the game and was founded by the sitters in 1845. Sir Spencer was MCC Treasurer and remained in that post for thirty-seven years, founding the Club’s collections and literally laying the foundation stone for the current Lord’s Pavilion.
Artist Lowes Cato Dickinson was born into a family firm of stationers and printmakers based in Old Bond Street in London who later branched into photography. This portrait is likely to have been based on enlarged studio photographs. There exists another identical individual portrait of Sir Spencer dating to 1885.
MCC Collection: purchased, 1926
TN.2009.2395
