James Byres

James Byres of Tonley, Aberdeenshire (1733 — 1817) was a Scottish antiquary and dealer in Old Master paintings and antiquities, a member of a family of Scottish Jacobite sympathizers [His father Patrick Byres went abroad after Battle of Culloden; "The Byres Family: An Eighteenth Century Portrait Group", "The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs" 82 No. 479 (February 1943, pp. 46-47, 49, p 48.] who settled in Rome in 1758, where he became a cicerone to Scottish and English gentlemen on the Grand Tour until his departure for Scotland in 1790. His house was in Via Paolina.

Byres was a painter and an adept designer, whose Vanvitellian design for a palazzo facade won a prize from the Accademia di San Luca in 1762. [John Fleming, in "Connoisseur Year Book" 1959 pp 24-27 and Fleming "Robert Adam and His Circle" (Harvard University Press) 1962, pp 306, 378.] In Rome members of his circle were drawn by Angelica Kauffman in a sketchbook she used from 1762 to 1764: the portraits include the English painter Nathaniel Dance, Gavin Hamilton, and the abbé Peter Grant. [Peter Grant of Blairfindry, head of the Scottish Mission. Arthur S. Marks, "Angelica Kauffmann and Some Americans on the Grand Tour" "American Art Journal " 12.2 (Spring 1980, pp. 4-24) p. 5.] By 1764 he was so well acquainted with the ancient sites and the cabinets of collectors that he took about a party of colonial Americans, including Samuel Powel of Philadelphia, who unlike his British peers, took assiduous notes. [Samuel Powel's "Short Notes on a Course of Antiquities at Rome in Company with Messers Apthorp Morgan & Palmer begun May 21, 1764 under Mr Byers Antiquarian" is conserved at the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia; (Marks 1980:11 note 31).]

William Constable purchased from Byres many of the Italian paintings and marble copies after Roman sculptures at Burton Constable, Yorkshire, and Byres was responsible for introducing the artist Anton Maron, who painted William Constable and his sister in the pose and dress of Cato and Marcia. [Christopher Gilbert, "William Constable as Patron (1721-1791) at Hull" "The Burlington Magazine" 112 No. 804 (March 1970), pp. 178, 183-184).] Among the antiquities that passed through his hands, the most famous may be the Portland Vase, which he sold to Sir William Hamilton in 1770. Among the commissions for which he acted as agent was the "Noli me Tangere" of Raphael Mengs, 1771, for an altarpiece for All Souls College, 1771. [John Sparrow, "An Oxford altar-piece" "The Burlington Magazine" 102 No. 682 (January 1960), pp 2, 4-9.]

A clear idea of his own collection can be gleaned from a 1790 inventory made upon his return to Tonley. Though he sent many of his clients to Pompeo Batoni, the only Batoni portrait hanging in his house was of his sister Isabella , Mrs Robert Sandilands. [Francis Russell, "Batoni's Mrs Sandilands and Other Portraits from the Collection of James Byres" "The Burlington Magazine" 120 No. 899 (February 1978), pp. 114, 116-117.]

Before he left Rome in 1790 he made a payment to the maître d'hôtel of Henry Benedict Stuart, Cardinal York in favour of the Duchess of Albany, illegitimate daughter of Bonnie Prince Charlie, so it may be inferred that his Jacobite sensibility ran deep.

Notes

Further reading

*For Byres and his collection, see Brinsley Ford, "James Byres, principal antiquarian to the English visitors to Rome", "Apollo" 99 (June 1974), pp 446-61.
*W.T. Whitley, "Artists and Their Friends in England 1700-1790" (1928) ii, pp247-48.