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Bust-length study of a fashionable lady, c. 1760s1760s
1760s
About the Item
Robert Healy (1743-1771) (attrib.)
Bust-length study of a fashionable lady, c. 1760s
Black chalk on prepared laid blue paper, heightened with white
15.6 x 24.4 cm.; (within frame) 54 x 44.2 cm.
Provenance:
Reputedly Nathaniel Hone the Elder (1718-1784);
Private collection, United Kingdom.
Previously ascribed to Thomas Gainsborough, this elegantly worked bust-length study was most likely created in the 1760s by the Irish artist Robert Healy, noted for his work in charcoal and chalk which imitated the mezzotint technique. In scale and conception the drawing is comparable to the remarkable mezzotints of Thomas Frye, particularly his series of seventeen life-size heads published between 1760-62 (‘Fancy Heads’). Frye frequented London’s theatres, sketching the attending royals and society ladies, and took a particular interest in their fashion and jewellery. The present work bears this influence, with Healy’s chalk highlights giving prominence to the sitter’s six row pearl choker and earrings, which comprise of three concentric rows surrounding a large central split pearl. The paper’s original blue pigmentation remains in areas, though since rubbed. According to an inscription verso, the drawing was once in the collection of Healy’s fellow Irishman, Nathaniel Hone the Elder.
Healy was born in Dublin in 1743, putatively the son of an architect and decorator. He showed an early talent for draughting, and studied at Dublin Society Schools under Robert West, himself a former pupil of the French Academy under François Boucher and Jean-Baptiste van Loo. Healy’s output concentrated around small, full and bust-length commissions in chalk. Although, as his actor friend John O’Keefe noted, Healy also enjoyed success drawing the favourite hunters, mares and ladies’ palfreys of the gentry. Healy was distinguished for his fastidious soft style, ‘like fine proof prints of the most exquisite mezzotinto [sic] engravings’ (Stewart, p. 241). Between 1766-70, he was known at addresses in Wood Quay, Essex, and Dame Street, Dublin. In 1768 Thomas Conolly at Castletown commissioned nine drawings of the family, and Lady Conolly wrote to Lady Sarah Napier of the ‘man in the house, who draws very good likenesses in black and white chalk’ (Jeffares). The Earls of Moira and Mornington held a number of his pictures, and he died following a short illness developed while sketching at Mornington’s Dangan Castle. His brother Robert succeeded him to produce copies and additional monochromatic pastels, which are difficult to distinguish from those of his brother.
I am grateful to Hugh Belsey for proposing the attribution to Healy upon examination of the work.
Bibliography and further reading:
Neil Jeffares, The Dictionary of Pastellists Before 1800 (London: Unicorn Press, 2006)
Anthony Pasquin, An Authentic History of the Professors of Painting, Sculpture, & Architecture, Who Have Practised in Ireland (London: H. D. Symonds, 1796)
Brian Stewart and Mervyn Cutten, Dictionary of Portrait Painters in Britain up to 1920 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collectors Club, 1997)
- Attributed to:Robert Healy (1743 - 1771, Irish)
- Creation Year:1760s
- Dimensions:Height: 21.26 in (54 cm)Width: 17.41 in (44.2 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:1760-1769
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:Maidenhead, GB
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU2820216422272
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