Sheridan Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 5th Marquess of Dufferin and Ava
Encyclopedia
Sheridan Frederick Terence Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 5th Marquess of Dufferin and Ava (9 July 1938 – 29 May 1988) was a British
patron of the arts. Less formally he was usually called Sheridan Dufferin.
family from Ulster
, he was the youngest child and only son of the 4th Marquess of Dufferin and Ava
and his wife, Maureen Guinness. One of his sisters was the novelist Caroline Blackwood
.
Named after his playwright ancestor Richard Brinsley Sheridan
, Lord Dufferin was known by his father's courtesy title Earl of Ava until he succeeded his father in the marquessate in 1945, when he was only 6 years-old. When he was aged 12, trustees acting in his name sold Clandeboye
, his ancestral seat, to his estates company for £120,000 in order "to maintain his station in life," as the trustees allegedly said at the time.
After attending a day school, Garth House, in Bangor, County Down
he went to Eton College
. After Eton he attended Christ Church, Oxford
. A keen shot and sportsman, he played championship tennis at Queen's Club
, but it was at Oxford that he developed a passion for the arts.
, and opened the Kasmin Gallery on New Bond Street, London
in 1963. The Kasmin was a radical gallery for the time and showed British and American abstract
and pop art
. The gallery was described as "a beautiful space in New Bond Street designed for them by Ahrends, Burton and Koralek
, with a curiously shaped white ceiling, white walls and a green-khaki rubberised floor. It was a space described by Kasmin as 'a machine for looking at pictures in'; those pictures, moreover, were prototypes of the new art. They looked as if they had been painted to be seen in museums: the space was designed for canvasses six feet square and upwards that would readily carry across a large room. The gallery thereby affirmed that painting had changed fundamentally: it was no longer being made to fit into drawing-rooms." Among the artists the gallery showed were Frank Stella
, Kenneth Noland
, Anthony Caro
and most famously of all David Hockney
. The Kasmin Gallery closed in 1972, with Kasmin going on to work in partnership with other London dealers up to the 1990s.
Lord Dufferin was appointed a trustee of the Wallace Collection
in 1973, and was also a trustee of the National Gallery, London
and continued to support up-and-coming contemporary British artists. He also helped in the making of films about the pianist Liberace
and the Playboy
entrepreneur
Hugh Hefner
, as well as backing the controversial 1976 film Sebastiane
, directed by the British filmmaker Derek Jarman
. He was also a sometime director of the Guinness
company, being a great-grandson of Edward Guinness, 1st Earl of Iveagh
.
In 1964 Lord Dufferin married his cousin Serena Belinda (Lindy) Rosemary Guinness, daughter of Group Captain Thomas "Loel" Guinness and his second wife, Lady Isabel Manners, herself a daughter of John Manners, 9th Duke of Rutland
. Their wedding was at St. Margaret's, Westminster
where 1,800 guests attended, including Princess Margaret and the Earl of Snowdon
. Lady Dufferin was also passionate about art and together they were at centre of the trendy art scene in late 1960s London. Parties at their house in Holland Park "were legendary in the late 1960s. You would find yourself talking to Princess Margaret or Duncan Grant
and Angelica Garnett
, or Francis Bacon
or Stephen Spender
or the Queen Mother
."
became extinct. The Barony of Dufferin and Clandeboye, the family's older title in the Peerage of Ireland
, passed to a distant kinsman.
His sister married Robert Lowell
in 1972, and they named their son Sheridan after his uncle.
In the years immediately before, and especially after, her husband's death, Lady Dufferin developed new initiatives at Clandeboye, and today the estate has associations with a number of environmental organisations and projects, being a home for Conservation Volunteers Northern Ireland's biodiversity projects, training centre and tree nursery (in the old walled garden). The Northern Ireland branch of the Woodland Trust
was established in 1998 in partnership with the Dufferin Foundation, and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
have developed a blossoming relationship with Clandeboye since 2003. Lady Dufferin also returned to the art world, and has exhibited in galleries in London and New York under the name Lindy Guinness. She was also the inspiration behind the opening of the Ava Gallery at Clandeboye in 2004, which exhibits works by leading contemporary Northern Irish artists and an annual exhibition of museum-standard work by a major artist or group of artists.
British people
The British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...
patron of the arts. Less formally he was usually called Sheridan Dufferin.
Childhood and Inheritance
Born into an Anglo-IrishAnglo-Irish
Anglo-Irish was a term used primarily in the 19th and early 20th centuries to identify a privileged social class in Ireland, whose members were the descendants and successors of the Protestant Ascendancy, mostly belonging to the Church of Ireland, which was the established church of Ireland until...
family from Ulster
Ulster
Ulster is one of the four provinces of Ireland, located in the north of the island. In ancient Ireland, it was one of the fifths ruled by a "king of over-kings" . Following the Norman invasion of Ireland, the ancient kingdoms were shired into a number of counties for administrative and judicial...
, he was the youngest child and only son of the 4th Marquess of Dufferin and Ava
Basil Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 4th Marquess of Dufferin and Ava
Basil Sheridan Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 4th Marquess of Dufferin and Ava DL , styled Earl of Ava until 1918, was a Conservative politician and soldier.-Early life and family:...
and his wife, Maureen Guinness. One of his sisters was the novelist Caroline Blackwood
Caroline Blackwood
Lady Caroline Maureen Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood was a writer and artist's muse, and the eldest child of the 4th Marquess of Dufferin and Ava and the brewery heiress Maureen Guinness....
.
Named after his playwright ancestor Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Richard Brinsley Butler Sheridan was an Irish-born playwright and poet and long-term owner of the London Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. For thirty-two years he was also a Whig Member of the British House of Commons for Stafford , Westminster and Ilchester...
, Lord Dufferin was known by his father's courtesy title Earl of Ava until he succeeded his father in the marquessate in 1945, when he was only 6 years-old. When he was aged 12, trustees acting in his name sold Clandeboye
Clandeboye
Clandeboye is in modern times an area of Bangor, County Down, Northern Ireland. It is named after the Clandeboye family, a branch of the O'Neill dynasty. They settled in the 1330s after the death of the Earl of Ulster in what is now south Antrim and north Down, giving their name to the territory...
, his ancestral seat, to his estates company for £120,000 in order "to maintain his station in life," as the trustees allegedly said at the time.
After attending a day school, Garth House, in Bangor, County Down
Bangor, County Down
Bangor is a large town in County Down, Northern Ireland. It is a seaside resort on the southern side of Belfast Lough and within the Belfast Metropolitan Area. Bangor Marina is one of the largest in Ireland, and holds Blue Flag status...
he went to Eton College
Eton College
Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....
. After Eton he attended Christ Church, Oxford
Christ Church, Oxford
Christ Church or house of Christ, and thus sometimes known as The House), is one of the largest constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England...
. A keen shot and sportsman, he played championship tennis at Queen's Club
Queen's Club
The Queen's Club is a private sporting club in West Kensington, London, England. Founded in 1886, the Queen's Club was the world's first multipurpose sports complex and named after Queen Victoria, its first patron...
, but it was at Oxford that he developed a passion for the arts.
Patron of the arts
After Oxford he met and went into partnership with John KasminJohn Kasmin
John Kasmin is a British art dealer who along with Robert Fraser promoted British and American Pop Art in the 1960s. He went to Magdalen College School in Oxford and then worked with the established London Art dealer Victor Musgrave. In 1960 Kasmin met David Hockney and when he set up his own...
, and opened the Kasmin Gallery on New Bond Street, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in 1963. The Kasmin was a radical gallery for the time and showed British and American abstract
Abstract art
Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an...
and pop art
Pop art
Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...
. The gallery was described as "a beautiful space in New Bond Street designed for them by Ahrends, Burton and Koralek
Ahrends, Burton and Koralek
Ahrends, Burton and Koralek is an English architectural practice. It was founded in 1961 by Peter Ahrends , Richard Burton , and Paul Koralek after they won first prize in a competition to produce a design for the Berkeley Library at Trinity College, Dublin in 1960...
, with a curiously shaped white ceiling, white walls and a green-khaki rubberised floor. It was a space described by Kasmin as 'a machine for looking at pictures in'; those pictures, moreover, were prototypes of the new art. They looked as if they had been painted to be seen in museums: the space was designed for canvasses six feet square and upwards that would readily carry across a large room. The gallery thereby affirmed that painting had changed fundamentally: it was no longer being made to fit into drawing-rooms." Among the artists the gallery showed were Frank Stella
Frank Stella
Frank Stella is an American painter and printmaker, significant within the art movements of minimalism and post-painterly abstraction.-Biography:...
, Kenneth Noland
Kenneth Noland
Kenneth Noland was an American abstract painter. He was one of the best-known American Color field painters, although in the 1950s he was thought of as an abstract expressionist and in the early 1960s he was thought of as a minimalist painter. Noland helped establish the Washington Color School...
, Anthony Caro
Anthony Caro
Sir Anthony Alfred Caro, OM, CBE is an English abstract sculptor whose work is characterised by assemblages of metal using 'found' industrial objects.-Background and early life:...
and most famously of all David Hockney
David Hockney
David Hockney, CH, RA, is an English painter, draughtsman, printmaker, stage designer and photographer, who is based in Bridlington, Yorkshire and Kensington, London....
. The Kasmin Gallery closed in 1972, with Kasmin going on to work in partnership with other London dealers up to the 1990s.
Lord Dufferin was appointed a trustee of the Wallace Collection
Wallace Collection
The Wallace Collection is a museum in London, with a world-famous range of fine and decorative arts from the 15th to the 19th centuries with large holdings of French 18th-century paintings, furniture, arms & armour, porcelain and Old Master paintings arranged into 25 galleries.It was established in...
in 1973, and was also a trustee of the National Gallery, London
National Gallery, London
The National Gallery is an art museum on Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The gallery is an exempt charity, and a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media...
and continued to support up-and-coming contemporary British artists. He also helped in the making of films about the pianist Liberace
Liberace
Wladziu Valentino Liberace , best known simply as Liberace, was a famous American pianist and vocalist.In a career that spanned four decades of concerts, recordings, motion pictures, television and endorsements, Liberace became world-renowned...
and the Playboy
Playboy
Playboy is an American men's magazine that features photographs of nude women as well as journalism and fiction. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with...
entrepreneur
Entrepreneur
An entrepreneur is an owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who is willing to...
Hugh Hefner
Hugh Hefner
Hugh Marston "Hef" Hefner is an American magazine publisher, founder and Chief Creative Officer of Playboy Enterprises.-Early life:...
, as well as backing the controversial 1976 film Sebastiane
Sebastiane
Sebastiane is a controversial 1976 film written and directed by Derek Jarman and Paul Humfress. It portrays the events of the life of Saint Sebastian, including his iconic martyrdom by arrows. Most of the controversy surrounding the film derives from the homoeroticism portrayed between the soldiers...
, directed by the British filmmaker Derek Jarman
Derek Jarman
Michael Derek Elworthy Jarman was an English film director, stage designer, diarist, artist, gardener and author.-Life:...
. He was also a sometime director of the Guinness
Guinness
Guinness is a popular Irish dry stout that originated in the brewery of Arthur Guinness at St. James's Gate, Dublin. Guinness is directly descended from the porter style that originated in London in the early 18th century and is one of the most successful beer brands worldwide, brewed in almost...
company, being a great-grandson of Edward Guinness, 1st Earl of Iveagh
Edward Guinness, 1st Earl of Iveagh
Edward Cecil Guinness, 1st Earl of Iveagh, KP, GCVO, FRS was an Irish philanthropist and businessman.-Public life:...
.
In 1964 Lord Dufferin married his cousin Serena Belinda (Lindy) Rosemary Guinness, daughter of Group Captain Thomas "Loel" Guinness and his second wife, Lady Isabel Manners, herself a daughter of John Manners, 9th Duke of Rutland
John Manners, 9th Duke of Rutland
John Henry Montagu Manners, 9th Duke of Rutland was the son of Henry Manners, 8th Duke of Rutland and his wife Violet....
. Their wedding was at St. Margaret's, Westminster
St. Margaret's, Westminster
The Anglican church of St. Margaret, Westminster Abbey is situated in the grounds of Westminster Abbey on Parliament Square, and is the parish church of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom in London...
where 1,800 guests attended, including Princess Margaret and the Earl of Snowdon
Earl of Snowdon
Earl of Snowdon is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1961, together with the subsidiary title Viscount Linley, of Nymans in the County of Sussex, for Antony Armstrong-Jones, who was then the husband of HRH The Princess Margaret...
. Lady Dufferin was also passionate about art and together they were at centre of the trendy art scene in late 1960s London. Parties at their house in Holland Park "were legendary in the late 1960s. You would find yourself talking to Princess Margaret or Duncan Grant
Duncan Grant
Duncan James Corrowr Grant was a British painter and designer of textiles, potterty and theatre sets and costumes...
and Angelica Garnett
Angelica Garnett
Angelica Vanessa Garnett is a British writer and painter.-Early life:She was the illegitimate daughter of the painters Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, sister of Virginia Woolf, and was a member of the Bloomsbury Group...
, or Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...
or Stephen Spender
Stephen Spender
Sir Stephen Harold Spender CBE was an English poet, novelist and essayist who concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle in his work...
or the Queen Mother
Queen mother
Queen Mother is a title or position reserved for a widowed queen consort whose son or daughter from that marriage is the reigning monarch. The term has been used in English since at least 1577...
."
Legacy
Lord Dufferin died on May 29, 1988 from an AIDS-related illness, aged 49. As there were no other living descendants in the direct male line from the 1st Marquess, the marquessate and the other peerages created for the 1st Marquess in the Peerage of the United KingdomPeerage of the United Kingdom
The Peerage of the United Kingdom comprises most peerages created in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland after the Act of Union in 1801, when it replaced the Peerage of Great Britain...
became extinct. The Barony of Dufferin and Clandeboye, the family's older title in the Peerage of Ireland
Peerage of Ireland
The Peerage of Ireland is the term used for those titles of nobility created by the English and later British monarchs of Ireland in their capacity as Lord or King of Ireland. The creation of such titles came to an end in the 19th century. The ranks of the Irish peerage are Duke, Marquess, Earl,...
, passed to a distant kinsman.
His sister married Robert Lowell
Robert Lowell
Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV was an American poet, considered the founder of the confessional poetry movement. He was appointed the sixth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress where he served from 1947 until 1948...
in 1972, and they named their son Sheridan after his uncle.
In the years immediately before, and especially after, her husband's death, Lady Dufferin developed new initiatives at Clandeboye, and today the estate has associations with a number of environmental organisations and projects, being a home for Conservation Volunteers Northern Ireland's biodiversity projects, training centre and tree nursery (in the old walled garden). The Northern Ireland branch of the Woodland Trust
Woodland Trust
The Woodland Trust is a conservation charity in the United Kingdom concerned with the protection and sympathetic management of native woodland heritage.-History:...
was established in 1998 in partnership with the Dufferin Foundation, and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, usually referred to as Kew Gardens, is 121 hectares of gardens and botanical glasshouses between Richmond and Kew in southwest London, England. "The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew" and the brand name "Kew" are also used as umbrella terms for the institution that runs...
have developed a blossoming relationship with Clandeboye since 2003. Lady Dufferin also returned to the art world, and has exhibited in galleries in London and New York under the name Lindy Guinness. She was also the inspiration behind the opening of the Ava Gallery at Clandeboye in 2004, which exhibits works by leading contemporary Northern Irish artists and an annual exhibition of museum-standard work by a major artist or group of artists.