Account book of Reverend John Sanford

Manuscript notebook recording the cost of Italian paintings seemingly purchased by Reverend John Sanford.

John Sanford was born in 1777 and educated at Brasenose College, Oxford. He matriculated in 1798, was awarded a BA degree in 1800, and an MA degree in 1803. Parish registers record him as rector of the church of Nynehead, his native village in Somerset, between 1811 and 1818.

On 2 June 1819 he married Elizabeth Georgina Morgan (1786-1857), a divorced woman, and the couple lived mainly abroad. They settled in Florence in the early 1830s, at the Casina Torrigiani, and later returned in London and lived in a large house, Number 4 Connaught Place. The couple's only child, Anna Horatia Caroline (1824-1899) married Frederick Henry Paul Methuen, later the 2nd Lord Methuen, in 1844.

John Sanford was a collector of artworks and following his death in Brighton in 1855, his possessions passed by inheritance to the Methuen family and was incorporated in the Corsham Collection.

Source: article titled 'The Sanford Collection' by Benedict Nicolson, published in 'The Burlington Magazine', volume 97, number 628, July 1955, pp.207-214, accessed 17 October 2019 via https://www.jstor.org/stable/871692

Open, access to all registered researchers.

Transferred from Art Collection, printed book collections, October 2019

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Previously stored with printed book collections formerly in the custody of the Barber Art Collection books, held at classmark N 5245, book number 842243.