George Squibb (auctioneer)

George Squibb (c. 1764 – 1831) was a British auctioneer, succeeding his father James,[1] who founded the auction house of Squibb & Son, and working from public rooms in Boyle Street, facing down Savile Row, London, where the elder Squibb had set up in 1778. The grand rooms had been built in the 1730s,[2] at the time Lord Burlington was developing the second phase of his real estate venture at the end of Burlington House gardens; they were extended by Squibb with a top-lit auction room.[3] In 1813 he sold the collection of paintings of the late Duke of San Pietro.[4] Among the country house auctions that fell under his hammer was that of the contents of Streatham Park, sold for Hester Thrale Piozzi in May 1816.[5] Among those associated with Squibb was Michael Bryan, the connoisseur and author of the Dictionary of Painters[6]

When not used as an auction venue, the large room Squibb added to the premises might be temporarily converted to a theatre, as Horace Walpole noted in 1790:

I found Little Burlington Street blocked up by coaches. Lord Barrymore, his sister Lady Caroline, and Mrs. Goodall the actress, were performing the Beaux Stratagem in Squib's auction-room, which his lordship has converted into a theatre.[7]

George Squibb's son Francis succeeded him briefly in the family business, but died prematurely in 1833.[8] The firm's successors were Rushworth, Abbott & Co.

References
  1. James Squibb, auctioneer, Savile-Row was gazetted among bankrupts in The Gentleman's Magazine, vol. 56 (1784) p 959.
  2. "The house looking down Savile Row from the north side of Boyle Street and later numbered 22–23 Savile Row, and the houses at the northern end of the west side, between Boyle Street and Clifford Street, were built at the same period. [i.e. ca 1733].... The focal point of the street was the building latterly known as No. 22–23, which blocked the north end and was clearly intended as one of the closing features characteristic of the Burlington estate." ('Cork Street and Savile Row Area: Introduction', Survey of London: volumes 31 and 32: St James Westminster, Part 2 (1963), pp. 442–455. (accessed: 03 September 2014).).
  3. The structure was built as a garden house, according to Henry Benjamin Wheatley, Round about Piccadilly and Pall Mall 1870:80; the detailed account of the development of the Burlington estate in Survey of London do not bear this out, however.
  4. Noted by George Redford, Art Sales: A history of sales of pictures and other works of art 1888:xxiii.
  5. Edward A. Bloom, Lillian D. Bloom eds.The Piozzi Letters, vol. 5: 1811–1816 (1999:423 et passim).
  6. Survey of London: The Parish of St James's, Westminster, vol. 32 (London County Council) 1963:534.
  7. Miss Berry's Journal, quoted in Wheatley.
  8. "In Saville-row, aged 44, Fran. Squibb, esq. the celebrated auctioneer" (obituary in The Gentleman's Magazine, December 1833:553); the will of Francis Squibb, Auctioneer of Saint James Westminster, Middlesex, of 23 December 1833, is conserved by The National Archives, Kew.
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