George Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont

Who was George Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont?

George O'Brien Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont, of Petworth House in Sussex and Orchard Wyndham in Somerset, was a British peer and a major landowner. He was interested in the latest scientific advances. He was an agriculturist and a friend of the agricultural writer Arthur Young, and was an enthusiastic canal builder who invested in many commercial ventures for the improvement of his estates. He played a limited role in politics.

He was a great patron of art and the painter Turner lived for a while at his Sussex seat of Petworth House. Several other painters including John Constable, C. R. Leslie, George Romney, the sculptor John Flaxman, and other talented artists received commissions from Egremont, who filled his house with valuable works of art. The earl was a sponsor of the Petworth Emigration Scheme intended to relieve rural poverty caused by overpopulation. Generous and hospitable, blunt and eccentric, the earl was in his day a very prominent figure in English society. Charles Greville assessed him as "immensely rich and his munificence was equal to his wealth" and wrote that "in his time Petworth was like a great inn".