Display caption
Portrait of The Rt. Hon. Sir Spencer Ponsonby-Fane (1824 – 1915), 1897
Walter William Ouless (1848 – 1933)
Oil on canvas
Turning down the Presidency on more than one occasion Ponsonby-Fane remained Treasurer for over 50 years encouraging MCC to acquire art and artefacts, thus establishing the foundations of the Club’s collections.
Ponsonby-Fane became a Member of MCC in 1840, having first played for the Club one year earlier as a boy of 15. He is also notable as one of the founding members of I Zingari and for the last 25 years of his life was President of Somerset County Cricket Club.
In 1912 he wrote the first catalogue of MCC paintings and claimed credit for forming the nucleus of the collection, ‘ransacking every dealer’s shop he could think of’ in search of cricket related scenes.
MCC Collections: Commission, 1897
TN.2009.2527
