{"meta":{"version":"2.1","_links":{"self":{"href":"https://api.vam.ac.uk/v2/object/O354913"},"collection_page":{"href":"https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O354913/"}},"images":{"_primary_thumbnail":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2011EV6279/full/!100,100/0/default.jpg","_iiif_image":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2011EV6279/","_alt_iiif_image":[],"imageResolution":"high","_images_meta":[{"assetRef":"2011EV6279","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2012FR8400","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2012FR8401","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false}]},"see_also":{"_iiif_pres":"https://iiif.vam.ac.uk/collections/O354913/manifest.json","_alt_iiif_pres":[]}},"record":{"systemNumber":"O354913","accessionNumber":"T.25-1967","objectType":"Portrait of Edmund Dummer","titles":[{"title":"Portrait of Edmund Dummer","type":""}],"summaryDescription":"Edmund Dummer is portrayed as a full-faced, elderly man seen (waist-length, three-quarter face to the right) against a dark brown background enclosed in an oval frame decorated with acanthus woven in yellows and browns to suggest gilding. He wears a black skull-cap and a loose gown in shades of pink with a blue lining. His creamy-white stock and shirt front have been heavily restored. At the foot of the fictive frame is a blue tablet with his arms.\r\n\r\nEdmund Dummer, third son of John Dummer of Swaythling (d.1662), was born in 1623 and died in January 1701/2 in his 79th year, so the tapestry portrait shows him at the end of his life. His monument in the church of St. Mary, Swaythling, near Southampton, is inscribed: “Edmund Dummer of Swathling, gent. who died the 15th January 1701 aged 78; and also in memory of Barbara his wife, daughter of Richard Cornelius of Sothton, Merchant, who died the 23rd day of March 1705, aged 70. They had 8 sons, and after having happily spent 40 years in a marriage-state, were here interred”. Only two sons, Edmund and Thomas, survived both parents, married and had children.\r\n\r\n<b>Related tapestries</b>\r\n\r\nSeveral fine English tapestry portraits have survived. They range in date from the Mortlake portrait of Sir Francis Crane, founder of the manufactory there, woven some time between 1626 and 1636 to a Windsor tapestry portrait of Queen Victoria in 1877.\r\n\r\nOne tapestry portrait has similarities of association and possibly of manufacture with that of Edmund Dummer. Thomson illustrates and describes this portrait with the inscription: CHARLES DE SAINT DENIS DE SAINT EVREMOND AGED 92 YEARS. The location of this portrait, then in the possession of Messrs. Lenygon, is not now known; but in 1991 a painting that probably served as the cartoon for it (in reverse of the tapestry and without the inscription, which would have had to be in mirror image for weaving) turned up in a Castle Howard sale (Sotheby’s, 11-13th November, lot 478).\r\n\r\nIt seems that the portraits of both Saint-Evremond and Dummer, giving an age at the very end of each life, were probably woven posthumously, as memorials.\r\n\r\n<b>Attribution and dating</b>\r\n\r\nW.G. Thomson considered that the portrait of Edmund Dummer, because that name appears in the Great Wardrobe accounts, was likely to have been woven in the workshop of John Vanderbank . But the Edmund Dummer of those accounts was the son (1663-1724) of the elder Edmund, appointed Clerk of the Great Wardrobe in June 1706 years after his father’s death. If, however, it is accepted that the portrait was woven as a memorial rather than actually in the 79th year of the subject’s life, there was from 1706 an even closer connection of the Dummer family to Vanderbank than Thomson realised, for Edmund Dummer’s younger brother, Thomas (c.1667-1749) became Deputy Master of the Great Wardrobe and Yeoman Taylor. In the latter post, Thomas Dummer was responsible for the workers lining the tapestries that Vanderbank’s arrasworkers repaired. As Deputy Master, running the Wardrobe for the Master, the Duke of Montagu, some payments for services were made by Thomas Dummer.\r\n\r\nEither Thomas or Edmund could have commissioned the tapestry portrait of their father from Vanderbank’s workshop; or even, since they may well have known his weavers, from one of them as a small private job. Of the two sons, Edmund Dummer seems the  more concerned with his family’s memorials. His will, made in 1720 before the birth of his son, John(1720-1749), left lands to his daughters’ husbands if they were to take the name of Dummer, and made provision for any of his daughters’ issue “fitted for learning” to be supported for seven years while they studied, provided they took the name of Dummer or Cornelius. He left £300 for monuments to be erected in St. Mary’s Church, including memorials to his father, mother and brothers; with instructions that a brother buried in London be re-interred in Swaythling. It was Edmund who in 1711 petitioned successfully for the confirmation of the coat-of-arms borne by his ancestors “time out of mind”.\r\n\r\nGiven the connections between the Dummers, the Montagus and Vanderbank, it is likely that the portrait was woven by a tapestry-weaver working in either his private workshop or the Wardrobe; possibly before the death of John Vanderbank, possibly later, when the workshop was run by his wife, Sarah (d.1727), in the name of their son, John, who succeeded to the Wardrobe post in April 1717. The Dummer family did buy tapestries from Vanderbank, as remains of two sets are still at Cranbury Park, the house purchased by Thomas Dummer’s son in 1737. Moreover, Vanderbank was recorded as producing fine portraits. When John Arbuthnot visited the workshop in 1695 he saw “a gentlemans picture… I could not desern the difference betwixt it and a good fresh piece of painting till I came near and touch’d it”.\r\n","physicalDescription":"\n","artistMakerPerson":[{"name":{"text":"John Vanderbank","id":"A8939"},"association":{"text":"weaver","id":"AAT25367"},"note":""}],"artistMakerOrganisations":[],"artistMakerPeople":[],"materials":[{"text":"silk","id":"AAT14072"},{"text":"worsted","id":"AAT227943"}],"techniques":[{"text":"tapestry","id":"AAT61981"}],"materialsAndTechniques":"Tapestry-woven silk and wool.  The weaving is in wool and silk, with 26 to 28 woollen warp threads to the inch.","categories":[{"text":"Textiles","id":"THES48885"},{"text":"Portraits","id":"THES48906"},{"text":"Interiors","id":"THES48933"},{"text":"Tapestry","id":"THES48887"}],"styles":[],"collectionCode":{"text":"T&F","id":"THES48601"},"images":["2011EV6279","2012FR8400","2012FR8401"],"imageResolution":"high","galleryLocations":[{"current":{"text":"010","id":"THES310512"},"free":"","case":"","shelf":"","box":""}],"partTypes":[[{"text":"Portrait","id":""}]],"contentWarnings":[{"apprise":"No","note":""}],"placesOfOrigin":[{"place":{"text":"England","id":"x28826"},"association":{"text":"made","id":"x28654"},"note":""}],"productionDates":[{"date":{"text":"1702","earliest":"1702-01-01","latest":"1702-12-31"},"association":{"text":"","id":""},"note":"Could be later (after 1721)"}],"associatedObjects":[],"creditLine":"Purchase (£300) from dealers V.&C. Sternberg","dimensions":[{"dimension":"Height","value":"84","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"","note":""},{"dimension":"Width","value":"64.5","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"","note":""},{"dimension":"Height","value":"33.5","unit":"in","qualifier":"approx.","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"","note":""},{"dimension":"Width","value":"25.75","unit":"in","qualifier":"minimum","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"","note":""},{"dimension":"Width","value":"26.25","unit":"in","qualifier":"maximum","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"","note":""}],"dimensionsNote":"","marksAndInscriptions":[{"content":"'EDMUNDUS DUMMER de / Swathling in Com: Southton / GEN: Anno Domini 1701 AETAT: LXXIX'","inscriber":{"name":{"text":"","id":""},"association":{"text":"","id":""}},"date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"description":"","interpretation":"","language":"","medium":"","method":"","position":"","script":"","translation":"","transliteration":"","type":"","note":"At the bottom of the frame in a blue cartouche"},{"content":"At the foot of the fictive frame is a blue tablet on which is superimposed the arms of Dummer: Azure, three fleurs-de-lys Or, on a chief of the second a demi-lion rampant issuant Sable; crest: on a wreath a demi-lion Azure holding in his dexter paw a like fleur-de-lys. The arms depicted in the tapestry may give some indication of date. Those for which the Dummers petitioned in 1711 had on the chief a blue demi-lion: in 1720 Edmund Dummer of Swaythling and his brother Thomas petitioned for an alternative, and in 1721 were granted a new patent giving the tincture of this lion as sable. As the lion in the tapestry is more black than blue, it is possible that it was woven after that date, even, perhaps, to commemorate the new grant.","inscriber":{"name":{"text":"","id":""},"association":{"text":"","id":""}},"date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"description":"","interpretation":"","language":"","medium":"","method":"","position":"","script":"","translation":"","transliteration":"","type":"","note":""}],"objectHistory":"If made for the Edmund Dummer who died in 1724, this portrait of his father was probably woven to hang in the new house, reputedly by Hawksmoor, that Dummer had built at Swaythling around 1708, to judge from the date found on drainpipes. Contents were still being ordered in 1720, when Edmund Dummer made his will and applied for the change in his coat-of-arms; so the tapestry may have been woven between 1721 and 1724. Edmund’s only son, John, died in 1749; leaving his married sisters and his remarried mother to become involved in Chancery disputes with his uncle and cousin, Thomas and Thomas Lee Dummer, over the Swaythling estates.  The portrait presumably remained at Swaythling, since it was there in 1901-2.\r\n\r\nAt that time, the portrait was owned by Miss C. C. Covey of The Grange, Swaythling, and was considered for purchase by the Museum. Walter Crane recommended it “as an historic link … illustrating the development of tapestry treatment and how in its latter days it attempted to vie with painting.”: A.J. Kendrick, Keeper of Textiles, described it as “an example of skilled tapestry weaving applied to portraiture”. £10 was offered to Miss Covey in November 1901. Her reaction is unknown, as is any information she might have been able to give as to the origins of the portrait or her own relationship to the Dummers, for in 1935 the file was “weeded” of everything other than the official form, which shows that the portrait was returned in April 1902 after photography. \r\n\r\nThis portrait was in a sale at Parke-Bernet, New York, on May 5 1962. The Museum finally acquired the portrait for £300 in 1967 from the Vigo-Sternberg Gallery. \r\n","historicalContext":"This object record is based on the manuscript for the book <i>From Mortlake to Soho: English Tapestry 1619-1782. Including a Catalogue of Tapestries in the Victoria and Albert Museum</i> by Wendy Hefford (1938-2022)","briefDescription":"Tapestry-woven portrait of Edmund Dummer in wool and silk, possibly woven by Vanderbank workshop, England, dated possibly 1702.","bibliographicReferences":[{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"W.G. Thomson, 1914. Tapestry Weaving in England from the Earliest Times to the End of the XVIIIth Century, London, New York, 1914, p.147"}],"production":"","productionType":{"text":"","id":""},"contentDescription":"","contentPlaces":[],"associatedPlaces":[],"contentPerson":[],"associatedPerson":[],"contentOrganisations":[],"associatedOrganisations":[],"contentPeople":[],"associatedPeople":[],"contentEvents":[],"associatedEvents":[],"contentOthers":[{"text":"","id":""}],"contentConcepts":[],"contentLiteraryRefs":[],"galleryLabels":[],"partNumbers":["T.25-1967"],"accessionNumberNum":"25","accessionNumberPrefix":"T","accessionYear":1967,"otherNumbers":[],"copyNumber":"","aspects":["WHOLE"],"assets":[],"recordModificationDate":"2026-05-27","recordCreationDate":"2009-06-24","availableToBook":false}}