Thomas Hickey

Portrait of an Officer

1780

After Sir Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641) Portrait of Sir Edward Lord Littleton, First Baron Lyttleton (1589-1645) Oil on canvas Image size: 96 by 76 cm Hand carved auricular frame Sir Edward Littleton was Solicitor-General to Charles I, 1634-40; Chief Justice of Common Pleas, January 1640-January 1641; Lord Keeper, 1641-45. Painted in his robes, and wearing the chain of office...

Gilbert Jackson English Active: 1620 - 1650 Portrait of a Girl Oil on panel, signed upper left and Inscribed upper right Image size: 24 ½ x 20 inches Contemporary style hand made...

English School, (circa 1600) Portrait of William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke Oil on panel, oval Image size: 29¼ x 23⅞ inches Painted wooden frame Provenance: 176, Collection of Francis Greville, 1st Earl of Warwick. The Trustees of the Lord Brooks’ Settlement, (removed from Warwick Castle). Sotheby’s, London, 22nd March 1968, lot 81. Painted onto wooden panel, this portrait shows a dark haired gentleman in profile sporting an open white shirt. On top of this garments is a richly detailed black cloak, decorated with gold thread and lined with a sumptuous crimson lining. With the red silk inside it’s all very expensive and would fall under sumptuary laws – so this is a nobleman of high degree. It’s melancholic air conforms to the contemporary popularity of this very human condition, evident in fashionable poetry and music of the period. In comparison to our own modern prejudices, melancholy was associated with creativity in this period. This portrait appeared in the earliest described list of pictures of Warwick castle dating to 1762. Compiled by collector and antiquary Sir William Musgrave ‘taken from the information of Lord & Lady Warwick’ (Add. MSS, 5726 fol. 3) is described; ‘8. Earl of Essex – an original by Zuccharo – seen in profile with black hair. Holding a black robe across his breast with his right hand.’ As tempting as it is to imagine that this is a portrait of Robert Devereux, the 2nd Earl Essex, we might take this with a pinch of salt. Its identification with this romantic and fatal Elizabethan might well have been an attempt to add romance to Warwick Castle’s walls. It doesn’t correspond all that well with Essex’s portraits around 1600 after his return from Cadiz. Notably, this picture was presumably hung not too far away from the castle’s two portraits of Queen Elizabeth I. The first, and undoubtedly the best, being the exquisite coronation portrait that was sold by Lord Brooke in the late 1970s and now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. The second, described as being ‘a copy from the original at Ld Hydes’, has yet to resurface. The portrait eventually ended up being hung in the State Bedroom of Warwick Castle. Archival documents present one other interesting candidate. The Greville family’s earliest inventory of paintings, made in 1630 at their home Brooke House in Holborn, London, describes five portraits of identified figures. All five belonged to the courtier, politician and poet Sir Fulke Greville (1554-1628), 1st Baron Brooke, and were hung in the ‘Gallerie’ of Brooke House behind yellow curtains. One of them was described as being of ‘Lord of Pembrooke’, which is likely to have been William Herbert (1580-1630), 3rd Earl of Pembroke. William was the eldest son of Greville’s best friend’s sister Mary Sidney, and was brought up in the particularly literary and poetically orientated household which his mother had supported. Notably, the 3rd Earl was one of the figures that Shakespeare’s first folio was dedicated to in 1623. The melancholic air to the portrait corresponds to William’s own pretensions as a learned and poetic figure. The richness of the robe in the painting, sporting golden thread and a spotted black fabric, is indicative of wealth beyond that of a simple poet or actor. The portrait’s dating to around the year 1600 might have coincided with William’s father death and his own rise to the Pembroke Earldom. This period of his life too was imbued with personal sadness, as an illicit affair with a Mary Fitton had resulted in a pregnancy and eventual banishment by Elizabeth I to Wilton after a short spell in Fleet Prison. His illegitimate son died shortly after being born. Despite being a close follower of the Earl of Essex, William had side-stepped supporting Devereux in the fatal uprising against the Queen and eventually regained favour at the court of the next monarch James I. His linen shirt is edged with a delicate border of lace and his black cloak is lined on the inside with sumptuous scarlet and richly decorated on the outside with gold braid and a pattern of embroidered black spots. Despite the richness of his clothes, William Herbert has been presented in a dishevelled state of semi-undress, his shirt unlaced far down his chest with the ties lying limply over his hand, indicating that he is in a state of distracted detachment. It has been suggested that the fashion for melancholy was rooted in an increase in self-consciousness and introspective reflection during the late 16th and early 17th centuries. In contemporary literature melancholy was said to be caused by a plenitude of the melancholy humor, one of the four vital humors, which were thought to regulate the functions of the body. An abundance of the melancholia humor was associated with a heightened creativity and intellectual ability and hence melancholy was linked to the notion of genius, as reflected in the work of the Oxford scholar Robert Burton, who in his work ‘The Anatomy of Melancholy’, described the Malcontent as ‘of all others [the]… most witty, [who] causeth many times divine ravishment, and a kind of enthusiamus… which stirreth them up to be excellent Philosophers, Poets and Prophets.’ (R. Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, London, 1621 in R. Strong, ‘Elizabethan Malady: Melancholy in Elizabethan and Jacobean Portraits’, Apollo, LXXIX, 1964). Melancholy was viewed as a highly fashionable affliction under Elizabeth I, and her successor James I, and a dejected demeanour was adopted by wealthy young men, often presenting themselves as scholars or despondent lovers, as reflected in the portraiture and literature from this period. Although the sitter in this portrait is, as yet, unidentified, it seems probable that he was a nobleman with literary or artistic ambitions, following in the same vain as such famous figures as the aristocratic poet and dramatist, Edward de Vere...

James Fellowes Flourished 1719 - 1750 Portrait of William Henry Kerr, Earl of Ancram, 4th Marquess of Lothian Oil on canvas, signed & dated 1747 Image size: 29 1/2 x 24 1/2 inches (75 x 62 cm) Original gilt wood frame William Henry Kerr was born a member of the Scottish peerage to William, third Marquess of Lothian, and his first wife Margaret, daughter of Sir Thomas Nicholson of Kemnay, first Baronet. William was styled Master Jedburgh until 1722, when his father was elevated to a Marquessate, after which he was referred to as Lord Jedburgh until 1735. Following his father’s military footsteps, on 20 June 1735 Ancram was commissioned as a cornet to the regiment (11th Dragoons) of his grand-uncle, Lord Mark Kerr. Ancram married Lady Caroline...

English School 17th Century Portrait of Thomas Cromwell 1st Earl of Essex Oil on canvas Image size: 24 x 20 inches Giltwood decorated frame PROVENANC...

after HANS HOLBEIN THE YOUNGER 1497 – 1543 PORTRAIT OF WILLIAM WARHAM Oil on canvas Image size: 38 x 35 inches (89 x 71 cm) Hand made period style frame The handling of the paint in...

Provenance: Torres Family Collection, Asunción, Paraguay, ca. 1967-2017 While the genre of portraiture flourished in the New World, very few examples of early Spanish colonial portraits have survived to the present day. This remarkable painting is a rare example of female portraiture, depicting a member of the highest echelons of society in Cuzco during the last quarter of the 17th century. Its most distinctive feature is the false beauty mark (called a chiqueador) that the sitter wears on her left temple. Chiqueadores served both a cosmetic and medicinal function. In addition to beautifying their wearers, these silk or velvet pouches often contained medicinal herbs thought to cure headaches. This painting depicts an unidentified lady from the Creole elite in Cuzco. Her formal posture and black costume are both typical of the established conventions of period portraiture and in line with the severe fashion of the Spanish court under the reign of Charles II, which remained current until the 18th century. She is shown in three-quarter profile, her long braids tied with soft pink bows and decorated with quatrefoil flowers, likely made of silver. Her facial features are idealized and rendered with great subtly, particularly in the rosy cheeks. While this portrait lacks the conventional coat of arms or cartouche that identifies the sitter, her high status is made clear by the wealth of jewels and luxury materials present in the painting. She is placed in an interior, set off against the red velvet curtain tied in the middle with a knot on her right, and the table covered with gold-trimmed red velvet cloth at the left. The sitter wears a four-tier pearl necklace with a knot in the center with matching three-tiered pearl bracelets and a cross-shaped earing with three increasingly large pearls. She also has several gold and silver rings on both hands—one holds a pair of silver gloves with red lining and the other is posed on a golden metal box, possibly a jewelry box. The materials of her costume are also of the highest quality, particularly the white lace trim of her wide neckline and circular cuffs. The historical moment in which this painting was produced was particularly rich in commissions of this kind. Following his arrival in Cuzco from Spain in the early 1670’s, bishop Manuel de Mollinedo y Angulo actively promoted the emergence of a distinctive regional school of painting in the city. Additionally, with the increase of wealth and economic prosperity in the New World, portraits quickly became a way for the growing elite class to celebrate their place in society and to preserve their memory. Portraits like this one would have been prominently displayed in a family’s home, perhaps in a dynastic portrait gallery. We are grateful to Professor Luis Eduardo Wuffarden for his assistance cataloguing this painting on the basis of high-resolution images. He has written that “the sober palette of the canvas, the quality of the pigments, the degree of aging, and the craquelure pattern on the painting layer confirm it to be an authentic and representative work of the Cuzco school of painting...

John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich (13 November 1718 – 30 April 1792) Attributed to George Knapton (1698-1778) Dressed in the Turkish manner, stand...

This stunning Old Master 17th century oil portrait painting is attributed to Francesco Fieravino, an artist famous in his day for still lifes and carpets. This painting which dates t...

Titan Fine Art present this picture which formed part of a historic collection of an English aristocratic family, Lord and Lady Sandys at their magnificent baroque and Regency Grade-...

Titan Fine Art present this picture which formed part of a historic collection of an English aristocratic family, Lord and Lady Sandys at their magnificent baroque and Regency Grade-...

The pendant to the present portrait showing John Pitcairn's wife Jean, née Robertson, is in the Huntington Art Gallery, San Marino. Both works are datable to the 1790s. Pitcairn, who served as Provost of Dundee from 1782-84, a position his father-in-law also held from 1731-32, later sat to Raeburn for another portrait, dated to circa 1820, which is now in the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh Sale of Christie's London: Wednesday, July 9, 2014 [Lot 00212] Old Master & British Paintings Day Sale Sold For 22,500 GBP Premium Provenance By descent from the sitter to his great-grandson, Ronald Andrew Pitcairn of Pitcullo; Christie's, London, 25 June 1904, lot 58 (200 gns. to Wallis). Alexander Reid, Glasgow. With Agnew's, London, where acquired by A.R. Wilson Wood, 7 April 1909; Christie's, London, 26 June 1914, lot 78 (850 gns. to Agnew). Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 24 November 1972, lot 27 (320 gns.) Private collection, Dublin, Ireland Exhibition Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Academy, 1876, no. 256 Literature W. Armstrong, Sir Henry Raeburn, London, 1901, p. 110. J. Greig, Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A., His life and work with a catalogue of his pictures, London, 1911, p. 55. R. Asleson and S.M. Bennett, British Paintings at The Huntington, New Haven and London, 2001, p. 312, fig. 12 Sir Henry Raeburn FRSE RA RSA (4 March 1756 – 8 July 1823) was a Scottish portrait painter and Scotland's first significant portrait painter since the Union to remain based in Scotland. He served as Portrait Painter to King George IV in Scotland. Raeburn was born the son of a manufacturer in Stockbridge, on the Water of Leith: a former village now within the city of Edinburgh. He had an older brother, born in 1744, called William Raeburn. His ancestors were believed to have been soldiers, and may have taken the name "Raeburn" from a hill farm in Annandale, held by Sir Walter Scott's family. Orphaned, he was supported by William and placed in Heriot's Hospital, where he received an education. At the age of fifteen he was apprenticed to the goldsmith James Gilliland of Edinburgh, and various pieces of jewellery, mourning rings and the like, adorned with minute drawings on ivory by his hand, still exist. Soon he took to the production of carefully finished portrait miniatures; meeting with success and patronage, he extended his practice to oil painting, at which he was self-taught. Gilliland watched the progress of his pupil with interest, and introduced him to David Martin, who had been the favourite assistant of Allan Ramsay the Latter, and was now the leading portrait painter in Edinburgh. Raeburn was especially aided by the loan of portraits to copy. Soon he had gained sufficient skill to make him decide to devote himself exclusively to painting. George Chalmers (1776; Dunfermline Town Hall) is his earliest known portrait. In his early twenties, Raeburn was asked to paint the portrait of a young lady he had noticed when he was sketching from nature in the fields. Ann was the daughter of Peter Edgar of Bridgelands, and widow of Count James Leslie of Deanhaugh. Fascinated by the handsome and intellectual young artist, she became his wife within a month, bringing him an ample fortune. The acquisition of wealth did not affect his enthusiasm or his industry, but spurred him on to acquire a thorough knowledge of his craft. It was usual for artists to visit Italy, and Raeburn set off with his wife. In London he was kindly received by Sir Joshua Reynolds, the president of the Royal Academy, who advised him on what to study in Rome, especially recommending the works of Michelangelo, and gave Raeburn letters of introduction for Italy. In Rome he met his fellow Scot Gavin Hamilton, Pompeo Girolamo Batoni and Byers, an antique dealer whose advice proved particularly useful, especially the recommendation that "he should never copy an object from memory, but, from the principal figure to the minutest accessory, have it placed before him." After two years of study in Italy he returned to Edinburgh in 1787, and began a successful career as a portrait painter. In that year he executed a seated portrait of the second Lord President Dundas. Examples of his earlier portraiture include a bust of Mrs Johnstone of Baldovie and a three-quarter-length of Dr James Hutton...