Robert Marsham, FRS (1708-1797)

after Johann Zoffany, RA (Frankfurt am Main 1733 - Kew 1810). Oil painting on canvas, Robert Marsham, FRS (1708-1797) after Johann Zoffany, RA (Frankfurt am Main 1733 - Kew 1810), inscribed Robert Marsham 1761. Half length seated portrait of Robert Marsham in a heavy coat leaning on a table with his right hand, a numbered list lies on the table. Squire of Stratton Strawless, friend of William Windham II and Benjamin Stillingfleet, and correspondent in his old age of Gilbert White of Selborne, Marsham was a passionate planter and cultivator of trees. He was particularly proud of having planted an oak at the age of twelve whose circumference was 122 feet in his own lifetime, though his favourite trees were beeches, whose growth, he believed, was improved by washing their trunks. The original of this portrait was painted around 1761, and is at Hardingham Hall. The present picture, like a copy elsewhere of another Zoffany, of Stillingfleet, seems to have come from Rippon Hall, which belonged to a junior line of the Marshams. Felbrigg, Norfolk (Accredited Museum)