Charles Jervas

Charles Jervas, Portrait of Joseph Mellish

1710

Margaret 'Peg' Woffington, was born in Dublin around 1714. Her charm and beauty as a child attracted much attention quickly resulting in her first stage role at the precocious age of 10. Her first important appearance was as Ophelia in 1737 in Dublin, followed by her greatest role, the male part of Sir Harry Windair in Farquhar's Constant Couple, which in 1740 led to her engagement by John Rich...

Follower of Samuel de Wilde c.1841 Portrait of an Actor in character. Oil on canvas; held in a period gilded frame. Dimensions refer to size of ...

Mather Brown (1761-1831) Portrait of Major-General John Robinson (1757-1819) Oil on canvas; held in a period giltwood frame Provenance: Denston Hall, Suffolk and by descent Literature: Suffolk Portraits, mss by Edmund Farrer, 1921. Vol. 5 (West Supp), entry 230, no.4 – NPG Heinz archive. John Robinson was a third generation professional soldier, whose father was a Lt.-Colonel. He joined the army in 1773 and was Captain by the time he married Rebecca Clive, daughter of “Clive of India” in March 1782. This family connection helped him immeasurably in his political ambitions as a seat in Parliament became available whilst his brother-in-law Edward, Lord Clive was in India. The portrait presented here was completed around 1805 when Robinson was a Major-General. This is confirmed by evidence that surrounds an incomplete portrait by George Romney of his late wife Rebecca. Unfinished at the time of Romney’s death, the painting remained unpaid for and unclaimed. On 25th March 1805, William Saunders, a framer, who had been looking after the work wrote to the artist’s son John Romney...

After Francis Wheatley, circa 1800 The Taming of the Shrew Oil on canvas; held in a period style frame. Dimensions refer to size of frame ...

A late nineteenth century polychrome painted panel, depicting a foliate and ornithological arabesque upon a white ground. Oil on panel, set within an ebonised frame.

In this exquisite work, painted around the time of the Great Fire of London in 1666, a beautiful young woman is wearing a green dress over a white chemise and a russet-coloured scarf...

This elegant portrait, presented by Titan Fine Art, depicts a beautiful young lady seated in a wooded area, resting one arm on a rock, before a landscape and a warm evening sky. She is wearing a white smock under russet-coloured silks, loosely held in place by an immense black diamond clasp on the sleeve, and her body is enveloped in a voluptuous swag of azure silk; the costly fabrics and jewels reveal that the sitter was a paragon of a wealthy and privileged society that she belonged to. Much of the attractiveness of this portrait resides in its graceful composition and the beauty of the youthful sitter. The flowing water in the left margin of the picture and the shell that she holds are compositional devises often used at the time to allude to her potential as wife and mother, recalling Proverbs, Chapter 5, Verse 18: “Let thye fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of thye youth”. Symbolism was a key component to many works of this period and contemporary viewers would have deciphered them immediately. Such images exude a sense of status and Augustan decorum, and were highly influential in transmitting these values into the first half of the eighteenth century. Held in a good quality and condition gilded antique frame. Herman Verelst was from a great dynasty of painters, with many members achieving great success. Specialising in portraits and still life paintings, he was one of the legions of foreign-born artists working in England at the time. Today, many of his pictures are given to other artists or are simply relegated to that term “circle of” which is a great disservice because he had an ability to render faces and drapery on par with some of the best artists at the time. Herman’s work is quite distinctive in the way he rendered faces and this particular pose was a favourite. His faces were portrayed with great skill often using the sfumato technique which gave them a very smooth feel to the skin with no hard lines, and many known works by him show that he could also render drapery with great affect. Our painting was painted in the 1690’s. His father, Pieter Hermansz Verelst...

Titan Fine Art presents this exquisite oil on panel portrait depicting a handsome young gentleman in an exuberant black damask doublet. The pose, with one hand holding gloves and the other akimbo, was one that was well-established for gentleman of the upper echelons of society by the time this work was painted. The principle governing portraits at this time was the recording and defining in visual terms of the position of a sitter in society. In addition to brilliant and complex symbols of luxury, they often contained many symbolic elements too; the inclusion of gloves was often used in portraits that celebrated a betrothal as in ancient times gloves were used to seal a marriage contract. The extraordinary costume of a black shimmering doublet, the brilliant white reticella ruff, and the cuffs edged with lace were immensely costly… this attire proclaims to every onlooker that this is a superior being. The rendering of the reticella lace ruff is exquisite and the artist has recorded the design that runs through the black damask fabric with meticulous attention to detail. The preservation of this black pigment is remarkable considering the age of the work. Black pigments are especially vulnerable to fade and wear over time partly due to environmental condition but also from unprofessional cleaning. This work is an exquisite example from the period. According to the inscription in the upper right, the gentleman was in his 22nd year of age in 1624. The coat of arms, which is displayed without a crest, may be ‘blazoned’ in the language of heraldry, as: Sable on a Chevron between in chief two Roundels and in base a Billet [or possibly Square] Or three Martlets Sable. In plainer English this means a black (Sable) background, spanned by a gold (Or) chevron, above which are two golden solid circles (Roundels), and below which is a gold rectangle (Billet); on the chevron are three small black birds (Martlets). Martlets are a stylised form of heraldic bird, believed to be based on the swift, which are conventionally drawn with small tufts instead of feet. In Continental Europe it is also conventional for them to be drawn without beaks, as appears to be the case here. The birds in this instance also have a vaguely duck-like appearance. Five families have been identified with very close armorial bearings to the one in our portrait. They are the (van) Houthem’s (of Brabant), the Prévinaire’s (of Flanders and Holland), and the Proveneer’s (of Liège) and it must be noted that the locations of these families also fit with the painting’s Flemish origins. However the French Grenières’s (of Île-de-France) and the Jallot’s (of Normandy) are the next closest matches and plausible matches, as Frans Pourbus had settled in Paris just a few years before our portrait was painted. This painting has been assessed by a professional conservator prior to going on sale, and as thus, it can be hung and enjoyed immediately. Frans Pourbus the Younger...

This magnificent oil on panel portrait, presented by Titan Fine Art, is a splendid example of the sumptuous female portraits that were painted for members of the upper echelons of society during the early part of the 1600’s. The artist has rendered this portrait with meticulous attention to detail and the surface effects of the fine materials. The elaborate lace coif and cuffs are painstakingly delineated, as is the bold black damask, and sumptuous gold decoration of her skirt and stomacher, which is wonderfully preserved and quite remarkable considering the age of the work and the fact that darker pigments are particularly vulnerable to fading and wear. This work with its spectacular depiction of costume is of absolute quality, it can be rated as one of the best works in the artist’s oeuvre and as such it is an important and splendid example of Dutch portraiture. The Dutch Golden Age of painting was a period in Dutch history, roughly spanning the 17th century, in which Dutch trade, science, military, and art were among the most acclaimed in the world. Dutch explorers charted new territory and settled abroad. Trade by the Dutch East-India Company thrived, and war heroes from the naval battles were decorated and became national heroes. During this time, The Dutch Old Masters began to prevail in the art world, creating a depth of realistic portraits of people and life in the area that has hardly been surpassed. The Golden Age painters depicted the scenes that their discerning new middleclass patrons wanted to see. This new wealth from merchant activities and exploration combined with a lack of church patronage, shifted art subjects away from biblical genres. Dress was a key component in portraits, and the exuberant attire reiterates the incredible wealth of this woman. The sitter will have visited the artist’s workshop and inspected examples on display. They would have chosen the size and the sort of composition and on that basis negotiated the price – which would have also been determined by the complexity of the clothing and the jewels that were to be depicted, and by the materials to be used. When all was considered, this portrait would have cost the sitter (or her husband) a substantial sum. The colour black was regarded as humble and devout yet at the same time refined and sophisticated and the most expensive colour of fabric to dye and to maintain. Citizens spent fortunes on beautiful black robes. Such uniformity must also have had a psychological side-effect and contributed to a sense of middle-class cohesion; the collective black of the well-to-do burgess class will have given its members a sense of solidarity. The colour was always an exciting one for artists and when this portrait was painted there were at least fifty shades of it, and as many different fabrics and accoutrements. Artists went to great lengths to depict the subtle nuances of the colour and the fabrics and textures and how they reflected light and it was an ideal background against which gold and crisp white lace could be juxtaposed to dramatic effect. The sitter is either a married women or a widower as is evident by the clothing that she wears and the position, toward her right, it is highly likely that this portrait was once a pendant that hung on the right-hand side of her husband’s portrait as was convention at the time. She wears a vlieger which was a type of sleeveless over-gown or cape worn by well-to-do married women in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Variations with short sleeves or high shoulder rolls are known. Sometimes sleeves were attached with aiglets, and often slits were made to allow belts or the hands to pass through. Three-piece vlieger costumes of this kind were standard items of clothing in portraits of the women of the civic elite in the period 1600-40 and was a variant of the Spanish ‘ropa’ and served as a trademark of well-to-do married burgher women. Girls and unmarried woman, including beguines, wore a bouwen (a dress with a fitted bodice and a skirt that was closed all round) instead. This clear distinction between apparel for married and unmarried women is clear not only from inventories and trousseau lists, but also from contemporary sources such as the Dutch Spanish dictionary published by Juan Rodrigues in 1634. In it, a bouwen is described as a ‘ropa de donzella’ (over-gown worn by a virgin) and a vlieger as a ‘ropa de casada’ (overgown worn by a married woman). It is striking how few women are depicted wearing a bouwen, unless they are part of a group, family or children’s portrait and it can therefore be assumed that independent portraits of unmarried women were seldom commissioned. It is also believed that the clothing worn in these portraits existed and were faithfully reproduced when cross-referenced with the few exact documents. These sources also demonstrate that clients wanted their clothing to be depicted accurately and with this in mind precious garments and jewels were often left in the painter’s studio. The prominent white lawn molensteenkraag (or millstone ruff) is held up by a wire supportasse and was reserved only for the citizens that could afford this luxurious item that often required 15 meters of linen batiste. The fabulous wealth of this sitter is also evident by the elaborate lace coif and cuffs which have been exquisitely depicted; lace was often literally copied by artists in thin white lines over the completed clothing. The gold bracelet with jewels is a type that was evidently fashionable as it is seen in a number of portraits during the 1610s and 1620. Clothing and jewellery were prized possessions and were often listed in inventories of estates and passed down from generation to generation. There were a great number of jewellers of Flemish origin working at all the courts and cities of Europe, competing with the Italians, and then the French, adapting themselves to the tastes and positions of their patrons and the raw materials available in the country where they worked. The fashion for jewels “in the Flemish style” succeeded that of the Italian style. Cornelis van der Voort, who was probably born in Antwerp around 1576, came to Amsterdam with his parents as a child. His father, a cloth weaver by trade, received his citizenship in 1592. It is not known who taught the young Van der Voort to paint, but it has been suggested that it was either Aert Pietersz or Cornelis Ketel. On 24 October 1598 Van der Voort became betrothed to Truytgen Willemsdr. After his first wife’s death he became betrothed to Cornelia Brouwer of Dordrecht in 1613. In addition to being an artist, Van der Voort was an art collector or dealer, or both. In 1607 he bought paintings from the estate of Gillis van Coninxloo, and after an earlier sale in 1610 a large number of works he owned were auctioned on 7 April 1614. Van der Voort is documented as appraising paintings in 1612, 1620 and 1624. In 1615 and 1619 he was warden of the Guild of St Luke. He was buried in Amsterdam’s Zuiderkerk on 2 November 1624, and on 13 May 1625 paintings in his estate were sold at auction. Van der Voort was one of Amsterdam’s leading portrait painters in the first quarter of the 17th century. Several of his group portraits are known. It is believed that he trained Thomas de Keyser (1596/97-1667) and Nicolaes Eliasz Pickenoy (1588-1650/56). His documented pupils were David Bailly (c. 1584/86-1657), Louis du Pré...