Who was Coplestone Warre Bampfylde?
Coplestone Warre Bampfylde, or Bamfylde, was a British landscape painter and garden designer active, especially in the west of England, in the mid- to late 18th century.
Life and Work
He was born 28 February 1720 at Hestercombe House, Taunton, England, the eldest of nine children of John Bampfylde (born 1691, died 1750), a member of Parliament for Exeter and Devon, and his second wife, Margaret (born 1694, died 1758) and was educated at Kingston, Tiverton and Winchester College (the latter from 1731 to 1738) and then St John's College, Oxford (1738) from which he did not graduate.
A lifelong friend of both Henry Hoare II of Stourhead, Wiltshire and Sir Charles Kemeys Tynte of Halswell, Somerset, Bampfylde assisted both of them on the developments of the landscape gardens at their own estates.
In 1750 he inherited Hestercombe. Here he developed pleasure grounds to the north of the house, with cascades, lakes, and a series of ornamental structures.
In 1755 Bampfylde married Mary Knight (died 1806), daughter of Edward Knight, a Worcestershire ironmaster and cousin of Richard Payne Knight of Downton Castle, Herefordshire, with whom he had no children.
In 1765, he designed the cascade at Stourhead and began making several painting tours, visiting first Hampshire (1766), then the Peak District (1780) and later the Lake District (1780). He exhibited his works in oil and watercolour at the Society of Artists, the Free Society and the Royal Academy.
In addition to painting and gardening, Bampfylde served in the Somerset militia and was an amateur architect and accomplished draughtsman. He provided illustrations for his friend, Christopher Anstey's, An Election Ball (1776) and Richard Graves’ Columella (1779) as well as for several other illustrated works. The frontispiece he provided for Columella features the cascade at Hestercombe, which Bampfylde had constructed sometime after 1762.
Bampfylde continued adding to the gardens at Hestercombe for the rest of his life. In 1786 he erected an urn to the sacred memory of both Hoare and Tynte. In 1788, he provided George III with a model of a penstock or sluice for use at Virginia Water, Surrey.
Bampfylde died on 23 August 1791 leaving Hestercombe to his nephew, John Tyndale, who assumed the name Warre. He was buried on 30 August in the Warre family tomb at St Mary's Church, Kingston. A wall plaque there, erected by his nephew, commemorates his life.
Sources:
- Somerset County Council, 'Somerset Historical Environment Record 43395' < http://webapp1.somerset.gov.uk... > [accessed 8 January 2009]
- White, Philip, 'Bampfylde, Coplestone Warre (1720–1791)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) < http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/... > [accessed 8 January 2009]
Further Reading:
- Colvin, Howard, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840, 3rd edition (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1995), pp. 97-98.
- The National Archives, Register of Archives. Person Details, 'Bampfylde, Coplestone Warre (1720-1791) Landscape Painter, GB/NNAF/P154261' < http://www.nationalarchives.go... > [accessed 8 January 2009]