Francis Dukinfield Astley (1781–1825) was an English poet, art collector, agriculturalist, industrialist, and High Sheriff of Cheshire. As a patron of the arts he was influential in the development of Manchester's first cultural institutions in the early 19th century.
When he died unexpectedly there were widespread rumours—never proven—that he was poisoned by his brother-in-law, Whig politician Thomas Gisborne.
Early life
Astley's father, John Astley, came from a modest family in Shropshire, but travelled to Rome and Florence in his twenties to study art, and there managed to eke out a living making copies of works by famous painters like Titian.William Betham, The Baronetage of England (Burrell and Bransby, 1802), page 379 He later moved to Dublin for several years and established a career as a portrait painter, which he successfully continued once he finally returned to England.Irish Portraits, 1660—1860 (Paul Mellon Foundation for British Art, 1969), pages 46 and 47 While his clients among the gentry and nobility praised his work, more discerning critics of the time considered him unexceptional—Horace Walpole wrote that "he has got too much into the style of the four thousand English painters about town, and is so intolerable as to work for money, not for fame," while Samuel Redgrave wrote that his "character and expression" were "weak."Correspondence of the Hon. Horace Walpole to Sir Horace Mann, Volume II (Richard Bentley, 1840), page 452Samuel Redgrave, A Dictionary of Artists of the English School (G. Bell, 1878), page 393
This poor critical assessment, in part, reflected upper class distaste for John Astley's reputation as "a ladykiller of the first water.""Ladykiller" cited in William B. Boulton, Thomas Gainsborough: His Life, Work, Friends, and Sitters (Kessinger, 2006), page 194 Known as "Beau Astley" for his charm and good looks, he married three times.<A History of the Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A. (H. Graves and Co., Limited, 1899), page 36 His first wife, whom he met in Ireland, died giving birth to their only child, Sophia—an ancestor of Sebastian Coe. His second marriage came in 1759 to Penelope Dukinfield Daniel, the wealthy widow of Sir William Dukinfield Daniel, the 3rd holder of the Dukinfield baronetcy. Penelope died only three years later, in 1762, and both the baronetcy and her substantial wealth and land holdings—the Dukinfield estate near Ashton-under-Lyne in Cheshire—were inherited by her only daughter, Henrietta, who lived in an asylum due to mental illness.
After Penelope died John Astley turned his attention to architecture, buying Schomberg House on Pall Mall in London and converting it into apartments and an artist's studio. He continued his womanising ways among London's elite while earning praise for his work remodelling clients' homes. His stepdaughter then died in 1771, and while the baronetcy passed to Sir William's cousin it was Astley who inherited her wealth and land.Edwin Butterworth, An Historical Account of the Towns of Ashton-under-Lyne, Stalybridge, and Dukinfield (Phillips, 1842), pages 161–165 He sold Schomberg and moved back north to the Dukinfield estate and began his most ambitious architectural project: Dukinfield Lodge, a mansion intended to be his family's new home, which was mostly completed by 1775. It was designed around a large octagonal saloon which he filled with a substantial art collection gathered from across Europe, including several Old Masters as well as some paintings of his own.
Francis Dukinfield Astley's mother, Mary Wagstaffe, was his father's third wife—one of three daughters of a prominent local surgeon who were collectively known as "the Manchester beauties.""Celebrated young beauty" quoted in Constance Astley's Trip to New Zealand, 1897–1898 (Victoria University Press, 1997), page 7 He was their third child together, and oldest son; he and all of his full siblings were born at Dukinfield Lodge.Daughters and son cited in Edward Edwards and Horace Walpole, Anecdotes of Painters Who Have Resided or Been Born in England (Leigh and Sotheby, 1808), page 125
Inheritance Astley was only six years old when his father died in 1787. John Astley's profligacy—spending more than £50,000 alone on building Dukinfield Lodge and filling it with art—meant that the family's finances were largely depleted by the time of his death; one critic said of him that "he owed his fortune to his form; his follies to his fortune!" These financial issues were partly alleviated by Astley's mother's second marriage, in 1793, to Reverend William Robert Hay, a wealthy solicitor and magistrate who would later become infamous for his role in the Peterloo Massacre.Debrett's Peerage of England, Scotland, and Ireland (John Debrett, 1840), page 425
The young Astley was sent away to board at Rugby School, and then study at Christ Church, Oxford. When he returned he immediately took an active role in managing the family's estate, pursuing a number of ventures to try and improve its profitability. He quickly gained a reputation as an "enlightened landlord," showing concern for his tenants' welfare during the economic slump brought on by the Napoleonic Wars by pausing rent collections and distributing money to those in need in the wider community.
He had a particular interest in new developments in agriculture and forestry and encouraged his farming tenants to experiment with ways of improving their yields, presenting engraved silver cups to those who displayed particular excellence. In 1807 he won a silver medal from the Society for the Improvement of Agriculture for having planted 40,000 trees across his Dukinfield estate, and published Hints to Planters, a book detailing his research into raising a wide variety of trees from seed, the same year. In 1812 he wrote to the journal of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce with news that one of his tenants, James Ogden, had invented a device for quickly and easily pruning trees ("the Dukinfield Pruner") which had been adopted across the region, and urged the Society to reward Ogden for his ingenuity (which it did, with a prize of ten guineas).
Bells were rung across Ashton-under-Lyne on his 25th birthday in 1804 and a large crowd gathered to celebrate. He served two non-consecutive terms as High Sheriff of Cheshire in 1806 and 1807, and similarly large crowds gathered to celebrate his inaugurations, one of which was commemorated in an oil painting by an unknown artist.
He also became a keen fox hunter, and commissioned the construction of Hunters' Tower, a lodge and stables dedicated to "festive enjoyment," to provide a home for the county's various hunting clubs. Astley wrote "A Hunting Song for a Snowy Day" to commemorate its opening on 27 February 1807. Benjamin Marshall painted Astley hunting in 1809 in Francis Dukinfield Astley and his Harriers, which was widely reproduced as an engraving by Richard Woodman. Hunters' Lodge later became a meeting house for Whigs in the Stalybridge area in the wake of the Reform Act 1832.
The pre-Astley Dukinfields had historically supported local dissenting non-Anglican Protestants by allowing them to construct a chapel (now Dukinfield Old Chapel) on their estate in 1706, which then also became the family's traditional burial place; in 1810, Astley gave the chapel more space for the establishment of a Sunday school, and one of his final acts before his death in 1825 was to formally hand ownership of the land to the chapel's trustees—against the wishes of his stepfather, who had wanted it granted to the Church of England instead.
Astley was appointed a justice of the peace in 1813. He was a freemason, and became Provincial Grand Master of the Cheshire Masonic Lodges in 1814.
Poetry & art
Poet Astley wrote poetry from a young age, and also painted as a hobby. He continued to expand the art collection at Dukinfield Lodge that his father had started—however, despite Astley's fondness for art he was not as well-educated on the subject as his father, and his reputation as a wealthy (yet not discerning) collector meant that he was a frequent target of unscrupulous dealers. In 1809, John Robinson Blakey visited Astley at Dukinfield Lodge and identified a number of valuable paintings in the collection which he told Astley were actually forgeries; he convinced Astley to "get rid of this rubbish—of this antique stuff—of this lumber that [is not] worth house-room" by letting Blakey buy them for a fraction of their real value, while at the same time successfully convincing Astley to purchase some of Blakey's own fakes, which were attributed to "the most distinguished masters who ever attended the Italian or Flemish schools." Astley discovered he had been conned shortly after, and successfully sued Blakey for the return of his money and paintings.
Astley wrote his most critically acclaimed poem—Varnishando, "a serio comic poem addressed to collectors of paintings"—the same year about his experiences with "such Goths, who would overrun the Empire of the Arts." He followed it in 1810 with Graphomania, another poem on the same subject which was also well received.
His poetry was published widely, and collected volumes of his works were published first in 1819, and then again after his death in 1825.
Art patron In the early 19th century several of the industrialising cities of Northern England had started to develop self-sustaining artistic communities with institutions similar to London's Royal Academy of Art—however, Manchester was a conspicuous laggard relative to peer cities like Liverpool and Birmingham, with a reputation for philistinism that would endure well into the Victorian era.
Astley, as one of the wealthiest men in the region, provided crucial support to young artists, musicians, and writers who otherwise could not have afforded to pursue their ambitions: he was the first patron of a young John Ralston in the early 1810s, and allowed him to practice his technique by copying paintings in the Lodge's collection. He was an early patron of antiquarian James Butterworth—when Butterworth was struggling to find subscribers for one of his first books a friend sought out Astley to ask if he would make a bulk purchase of ten copies, but Astley insisted on buying one hundred copies instead. He was also one of the first subscribers of the Stalybridge Old Band—which was formed by some local teenagers in 1809 and grew into one of the most successful brass bands of its era—and donated £2 2s every year from 1814 until his death.
In 1823, a group of local artists came together and voted to establish "the Manchester Institution for the Promotion of Literature, Science, and the Arts," a building which would contain art galleries (for annual exhibitions of works by local artists), lecture theatres, a library, and research laboratories. Astley was one of the first (and most generous) patrons of what would become the Royal Manchester Institution, donating £42 in 1823 towards the purchase of a plot of land on Mosley Street in Manchester for the construction of its headquarters.
Family Astley married Susan Fyshe Palmer, from Ickwell in Bedfordshire, in 1812. Together they had two sons: their first, John Dukinfield Astley, accidentally fell out of a window and died in 1813, aged only 16 weeks; their second son, Francis Dukinfield Palmer Astley, was born on 24 April 1825, only a few months before his father's death.
He also allegedly had an illegitimate son, William Astley, with Jenny Lightfoot, a local woman in Ashton-under-Lyne; William was born in 1803 and baptised at Dukinfield Old Chapel, with Astley recorded as his father, but he is reported to have struggled with insanity his entire life before dying in Lymm in 1843.