The story
In February 1779 Admiral Augustus Keppel was acquitted by a court martial over his conduct in a sea battle against the French. Soon after, he sat again for his friend Joshua Reynolds, London's leading portrait painter, who showed him against a stormy sky, gripping the sword that had been returned to him. Keppel ordered four versions to give to the men who had stood by him. One of them, given to the lawyer John Dunning, hangs at Beningbrough Hall, a country house outside York.
The house was finished in 1716 for John Bourchier, a local landowner, and built by the York builder William Thornton. Its designer is uncertain, and the architect Thomas Archer is one suggestion. The National Trust took it over in 1958, after the government accepted it in lieu of death duties.
Most of the faces on its walls come from London. Since 1979 the National Portrait Gallery has lent the house more than 100 portraits from the 18th century. Among them are more Reynolds sitters, the admiral Edward Boscawen and the politician William Pulteney, Earl of Bath, and an early Gainsborough of Admiral Edward Vernon from 1753. The baroque rooms around them are part of the visit, with a cantilevered staircase and fine carved woodwork along corridors that run the length of the house.
