Herbert Johnson Harvey

Herbert Johnson Harvey, The Whisper, Self-Portrait, Pastel

c. 1920

This early 20th-century watercolour by British artist Henry Gillard Glindoni (1852-1913) depicts a passing encounter between two old friends. “And perhaps another game of cards?” he...

This charming mid-19th-century watercolour by British artist Thomas Sidney Cooper RA (1803-1902) depicts two sheep and a cow in a landscape. Cooper was a distinguished British painte...

Pastel on paper Image size: 13 x 17 1/2 inches (33 x 44.5 cm) Mounted and framed This original pastel drawing by Thomas Frye is a half-length portrait of a man dressed in a turban. This drawing is the original sketch for one of the heads depicted in Frye's collection 'Twelve Mezzotint Prints' of 1760 and it can be assumed that this pastel work was created earlier of this same year. Two versions of the print, created from this original work, are currently held in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Frye's evocative figures, although presumably based on living models, exceed the conventions of portraiture, and also function as character studies. The man shown here - dressed in the fashionable 'Turkish' manner - turns with parted lips as if poised to speak, while raising the elegant fingers in one hand in a rhetorical gesture. His long eyelashes and smoothly rendered wrinkles and dimples are hallmarks of Frye's refined style. The Artist Thomas Frye (c. 1710 – 3 April 1762) was an Anglo-Irish artist, best known for his portraits in oil and pastel, including some miniatures and his early mezzotint engravings. He was also the patentee of the Bow porcelain factory, London, and claimed in his epitaph to be "the inventor and first manufacturer of porcelain in England," though his rivals at the Chelsea porcelain factory seem to have preceded him in bringing wares to market. The Bow porcelain works did not long survive Frye's death; their final auctions took place in May 1764. Frye was born at Edenderry, County Offaly, Ireland, in 1710; in his youth he went to London to practice as an artist. His earliest works are a pair of pastel portraits of boys...

A study in red chalk of a girl sitting and reading a book. Red chalk on paper under glass in a giltwood and gesso frame. This small drawing has a sense of intimacy in the capturing of a moment where the sitter is seemingly unaware of being observed, unlike the feeling of formailty and self-awareness in a staged portrait sitting Provenance: Private collection, Somerset With J. Davey & Sons Ltd, Liverpool William Hoare...