Philip Gell was educated at
Pembroke College,
Cambridge, to which he was admitted in 1741. He went on the
Grand Tour to
Italy in 1744 and remained there until 1747, visiting
Padua,
Venice,
Naples and
Rome. In Venice he is recorded as having attended a dinner given by Lord Holderness for the
Society of Dilettanti, on 12 February 1745. After his return he became a member of the Society of Dilettanti in 1748. Gell almost certainly knew
Kitty Fisher, who had a reputation as a renowned
courtesan. In January 1759, his friend Thomas Bowlby wrote to him: ‘You must come to town to see Kitty Fisher, the most pretty, extravagant, wicked little whore that ever flourished. You may have seen her but she was nothing till this winter.’ By 1758 Fisher was fast becoming the biggest celebrity across the land.Gell was married relatively late, when aged 50, to the poet Dorothy Milnes (daughter and co-heir of William Milnes of Aldercar Park), in 1774, with her parents' consent as she was 16. Dorothy Gell had her portrait painted by
Joseph Wright of Derby and was part of ‘Wright’s set.’ Another of Wright’s sitters, Edward Becher Leacroft, dedicated a collection of poetry to Wright’s group, including Dorothy Gell. When Philip Eyre Gell died in 1795 he left the Hopton estate to eldest son
Philip Gell MP (1775–1842). His second son was renowned antiquarian
Sir William Gell. Philip was succeeded by daughter Isabella, who died in 1878, thus ending the Gell line. An archive of documents from the Gell family of Hopton Hall is held by the
Derbyshire Record Office. == Portrait of Philip Gell by Sir Joshua Reynolds ==