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Eighteenth century Old Master drawing - St Jerome
By John Hamilton Mortimer
Located in London, GB
Pen, ink and wash
Framed dimensions: 9 ½ x 11 ¼ inches
Drawn c. 1763
This small, powerful study shows St Jerome contemplating the bible with a cross and sk...
Category
18th Century Old Masters Figurative Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Pen, Ink
Eighteenth century Old Master drawing - Apollo destroying Niobe's children
By John Hamilton Mortimer
Located in London, GB
Pen, ink and wash
Framed dimensions: 13 x 11 ¼ inches
Drawn c.1765
Verso: a study of a hanged man
Mortimer has filled this small sheet with action, depicting in the top right, Apollo and Artemis...
Category
18th Century Old Masters Figurative Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Pen, Ink
20th century British Drawing - Les Deux Landaises (Evening)
By Gerald Leslie Brockhurst
Located in London, GB
Pencil on paper
Signed 'G.L. Brockhurst’ (lower right)
Drawn c.1920
Collections:
The Fine Art Society, London, 1981;
Mr & Mrs Alan Fortunoff, acquired from the above;
Private col...
Category
20th Century Figurative Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Pencil
Eighteenth-century Grand Tour marble bust of Faustina the Younger
Located in London, GB
Signed and dated: ‘F. Harwood Fecit 1764’
Collections:
Probably commissioned by Alexander Gordon, 4th Duke of Gordon (1743-1827);
Probably by descent at Gordon Castle, Banffshire to c.1948;
Possibly acquired by Bert Crowther of Syon Lodge, Middlesex;
Jacques Hollander (1940-2004);
Christie’s, 5 December 2013, lot 101;
Private collection;
Sotheby’s, 2 July 2019, lot 106
Literature:
John Preston Neale, Views of the seats of noblemen and gentlemen, in England, Wales and Scotland, London, 1822, vol.I, unpaginated.
This marble copy of an ancient bust in the Musei Capitolini usually identified as Faustina the Younger, the daughter of Antoninus Pius and future wife of Marcus Aurelius, was made in Florence by Francis Harwood in 1764. Harwood was one of the most prolific suppliers of decorative marbles for the Grand Tour market and this finely worked example demonstrates the quality of luxury goods available to travellers to Italy. So often anonymous, this unusually signed and dated example, raises questions about the status of marble copies in the period and of sculptors such as Harwood who are known principally for ornamental work.
Harwood’s origins remain obscure. He is documented living in Palazzo Zuccari with Joshua Reynolds and the Irish sculptor Simon Vierpyl at Easter 1752, he had certainly settled permanently in Florence by the following year, when he is recorded working with Joseph Wilton. He was admitted to the Florentine Academy on 12 January 1755 (as pittore Inglese, although he was described as scultore in the matriculation account). After Wilson returned to England in 1755 Harwood appears to have worked in a studio near SS. Annunziata with Giovanni Battista Piamontini who had made life-size copies of The Wrestlers and The Listening Slave for Joseph Leeson in 1754. In 1758 both sculptors were contracted to make a statue and a trophy to complete the decoration of the Porta San Gallo, Harwood completing a statue of Equality, installed the following year.
By 1760 Harwood was on the brink of his most productive period as a sculptor, producing copies of celebrated antiquities for the ever-increasing audience of Grand Tour travellers and for the domestic market in London. In 1761 Harwood met the young architect James Adam who was in Italy specifically to make contact with suppliers for Robert Adam’s burgeoning practice back in Britain. The Adams offered a remarkably cohesive design package to their clients, encompassing not just architecture, but fixtures, fittings and furniture as well. Harwood was able to supply the brothers with marbles for their new interiors. At Syon, for example, Harwood produced a full-size copy of Michelangelo’s Bacchus for the new dining room the Adams had designed for Hugh Smythson, 1st Duke of Northumberland.
Harwood seems to have also specialised in producing sets of library busts. In 1758 Charles Compton, 7th Earl of Northampton, a distinguished traveller commissioned a set of busts which remain in situ at Castle Ashby in Northamptonshire. It is perhaps no coincidence that the Adam brothers were producing designs for new interiors at Castle Ashby at this date. The set included representations of: Cicero, Julius Caesar, Marcus Aurelius, Faustina the Younger, Sappho, Seneca and Homer. Each of these busts Harwood seems to have replicated for multiple patrons, another Adam patron, Thomas Dundas...
Category
18th Century Old Masters Figurative Sculptures
Materials
Marble
Eighteenth-century Irish portrait of the Rev. Henry Dabzac
By Hugh Douglas Hamilton
Located in London, GB
Pastel on paper, oval
9 x 7 ¼ inches; 230 x 185 mm
Inscribed on the verso:
‘The Revd Henry Dabzac D.D./ late Senior Fellow of/ Trinity College Dublin/ ever to be lamented by all that knew/ Him. Extensive learning, zeal, gently tempered/ by a spirit of charity & above all, a strong/ faith & a piety deservedly gained/ the character of a great and good man./ This exceptional man died 12th May 1790/ This picture was his give to Jane [Mary] Crofton, his sincerely [missing] sister.’
Collections:
Rev. Dr Henry Dabzac gift to his sister, Jane Crofton (d.1797);
Sir Hugh Crofton (1763-1834);
By descent to 1990;
Private collection, Dorset to 2020.
Literature:
Robert Staveley, Traces of Past and Present, Dublin, 1895, p.74;
Neil Jeffares, Dictionary of Pastellists Before 1800, online edition, no.J3751247
This characteristic pastel portrait by Hugh Douglas Hamilton was made early in his career; it depicts precisely the kind of education, well-connected Irish sitter who fuelled his success. The Reverend Henry Dabzac was from a distinguished Huguenot family, a celebrated academic historian, Dabzac received the Donegall lectureship in 1764 and from 1785 was Librarian and Senior Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin. According to his earliest biographer, Hamilton was the son of a peruke-maker based in Crow Street, Dublin. As Anne Hodge has pointed out, this places Hamilton’s father at the heart of the city: Crow street was a narrow thoroughfare formed part of the busy warren of streets bordered by the old Houses of Parliament and Trinity College at one end, and by Dublin Castle at the other. It is perhaps telling that in this early portrait, Hamilton shows Dabzac in a splendid powdered wig and his clerical bands. In 1754 Hamilton was apprenticed to James Mannin, a ‘pattern drawer’ who two years later was appointed master of the school of ornament at the Dublin Society’s drawing school, run by Robert West. Here Hamilton took the first prize in the 1755 competition, winning a premium of £1/16/. Hamilton developed a popular and profitable method of making pastel likenesses of sitters in a distinctive oval format. Hamilton developed a technique of using a sharpened pastel to hatch shaded areas of the features and, in the case of this portrait of Dabzac, the white powdered wig, which is drawn with particular care. In 1764 Hamilton moved to London where this small, oval pastels proved...
Category
18th Century Old Masters Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Pastel
18th century allegorical painting of The Triumph of Beauty
Located in London, GB
Exhibited:
London, Royal Academy, 1800, no. 93
What was happening in British history painting in around 1800? In recent discussions of the emergence of a British School of history painting following the foundation of the Royal Academy in 1768, this is a question which is rarely posed and one which is not easily answered. Examination of surviving Royal Academy exhibition catalogues reveals a profusion of artists’ names and titles, few of which remain immediately recognizable, whilst endeavours to explain the impact of exhibition culture on painting - such as the 2001 Courtauld show Art on the Line - have tended to focus on the first and second generation of Royal Academician, rather than young or aspiring artists in the early nineteenth century. This makes the discovery and identification of the work under discussion of exceptional importance in making sense of currents in English painting around 1800. Executed by Edward Dayes...
Category
18th Century Old Masters Figurative Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
18th century oil sketches for a Baroque interior - a pair
Located in London, GB
A FEAST OF THE GODS WITH VENUS AND BACCHUS
Collections:
With Appleby Brothers, London, June 1957;
Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox, London, 1961;
John and Eileen Harris, acquired from the above, to 2015.
Literature:
Jacob Simon and Ellis Hillman, English Baroque Sketches: The Painted Interior in the Age of Thornhill, 1974, cat. no.12 (as by Louis Laguerre);
Elizabeth Einberg (ed.), Manners and Morals: Hogarth and British Painting, 1700-1760, exh. cat., London (Tate Gallery), 1987, cat. no.10 (as by Louis Laguerre);
Tabitha Barber and Tim Bachelor, British Baroque: Power and Illusion, exh. cat., London (Tate Britain), 2020.
Exhibited:
Twickenham, Marble Hill House, English Baroque Sketches: The Painted Interior in the Age of Thornhill, 1974, no.12 (as by Louis Laguerre);
London, Tate Gallery, Manners and Morals: Hogarth and British Painting, 1700-1760, 1987, no.10 (as by Louis Laguerre);
London, Tate Britain, British Baroque: Power and Illusion, cat. no 92, 2020.
CUPID AND PSYCHE BEFORE JUPITER
Collections:
With Appleby Brothers, London, June 1957;
Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox, London, 1961;
Anthony Hobson, acquired from the above, to 2015.
These recently re-united paintings are the most ambitious surviving baroque ceiling sketches made in Britain in the early eighteenth century. From the Restoration until the rise of Palladianism in the 1720s decorative history painting formed the preeminent artistic discipline in Britain. It was a field dominated by Continental artists including the Italian Antonio Verrio and the Frenchmen Louis Laguerre and Louis Chéron...
Category
Early 18th Century Baroque Figurative Paintings
Materials
Oil, Canvas
Early oil depicting the Great Fire of London
Located in London, GB
The Great Fire of London in September 1666 was one of the greatest disasters in the city’s history. The City, with its wooden houses crowded together in narrow streets, was a natural fire risk, and predictions that London would burn down became a shocking reality. The fire began in a bakery in Pudding Lane, an area near the Thames teeming with warehouses and shops full of flammable materials, such as timber, oil, coal, pitch and turpentine. Inevitably the fire spread rapidly from this area into the City. Our painting depicts the impact of the fire on those who were caught in it and creates a very dramatic impression of what the fire was like. Closer inspection reveals a scene of chaos and panic with people running out of the gates. It shows Cripplegate in the north of the City, with St Giles without Cripplegate to its left, in flames (on the site of the present day Barbican). The painting probably represents the fire on the night of Tuesday 4 September, when four-fifths of the City was burning at once, including St Paul's Cathedral. Old St Paul’s can be seen to the right of the canvas, the medieval church with its thick stone walls, was considered a place of safety, but the building was covered in wooden scaffolding as it was in the midst of being restored by the then little known architect, Christopher Wren and caught fire. Our painting seems to depict a specific moment on the Tuesday night when the lead on St Paul’s caught fire and, as the diarist John Evelyn described: ‘the stones of Paul’s flew like grenades, the melting lead running down the streets in a stream and the very pavements glowing with the firey redness, so as no horse, nor man, was able to tread on them.’
Although the loss of life was minimal, some accounts record only sixteen perished, the magnitude of the property loss was shocking – some four hundred and thirty acres, about eighty per cent of the City proper was destroyed, including over thirteen thousand houses, eighty-nine churches, and fifty-two Guild Halls. Thousands were homeless and financially ruined. The Great Fire, and the subsequent fire of 1676, which destroyed over six hundred houses south of the Thames, changed the appearance of London forever. The one constructive outcome of the Great Fire was that the plague, which had devastated the population of London since 1665, diminished greatly, due to the mass death of the plague-carrying rats in the blaze.
The fire was widely reported in eyewitness accounts, newspapers, letters and diaries. Samuel Pepys recorded climbing the steeple of Barking Church from which he viewed the destroyed City: ‘the saddest sight of desolation that I ever saw.’ There was an official enquiry into the causes of the fire, petitions to the King and Lord Mayor to rebuild, new legislation and building Acts. Naturally, the fire became a dramatic and extremely popular subject for painters and engravers. A group of works relatively closely related to the present picture have been traditionally ascribed to Jan Griffier...
Category
17th Century Old Masters Landscape Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
18th century portrait of the painter Nathaniel Dance
Located in London, GB
Collections:
Robert Gallon (1845-1925);
Private Collection, UK.
Oil on canvas laid down on panel
Framed dimensions: 11.5 x 10 inches
This highly engaging, previously unpublished portrait by Johan...
Category
18th Century Old Masters Portrait Paintings
Materials
Oil, Wood Panel, Canvas
Roman 18th century terracotta model for the sculpture of San Camillo de Lellis
Located in London, GB
This remarkably fluid terracotta bozetto was made in preparation for Pietro Pacilli’s most important public commission, a large-scale marble statue of San Camillo de Lellis for the nave of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Expressively modelled, this terracotta sculpture is a rare and significant work made by a major Roman sculptor at a transformative moment of European sculpture. Pacilli began his working life on the great Baroque decorative projects initiated in the seventeenth century, but he found success as a restorer of ancient sculpture working to finish antiquities for a tourist market, becoming an important figure in the emergence of an archaeologically minded Neoclassicism. Pacilli trained Vincenzo Pacetti and provided important decorative work for the Museo Pio-Clementino, at the same time he is recorded restoring some of the most celebrated antiquities excavated and exported during the period.
Pacilli was born into a family of Roman craftsmen, his father Carlo was a wood carver, and Pacilli is recorded working with him on the Corsini Chapel in San Giovanni Laternao as early as 1735. In 1738 his terracotta model of Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife won the first prize in the second class of the sculpture concorso at the Accademia di San Luca, this is particularly notable as Bartolomeo Cavaceppi came third. He worked as a carver and stuccoist completing works for the churches of San Marco and SS. Trinita dei Domeniciani Spagnoli. Pacilli operated as a sculptor and restorer of antiquities from his studio at the top of the Spanish Steps, close to Santa Trinita dei Monti, where he is listed as a potential vendor to the Museo Pio-Clementino in 1770.
In 1763 Pacilli completed a silver figure of San Venanzio for the treasury of San Venanzio. He is recorded as Pacetti’s first master and it was evidently through Pacilli that he began to acquire his facility as a restorer of ancient sculpture. Pacilli, at his studio ‘poco prima dell’Arco della Regina alla Trinita dei Monti,’ exercised, what the nineteenth-century scholar, Adolf Michaelis called ‘rejuvenating arts’ on several important pieces of classical sculpture, including in 1760 the group of a Satyr with a Flute for the natural brother of George III, General Wallmoden, Hanovarian minister at Vienna. In 1765, Dallaway and Michaelis record that Pacilli was responsible for the restorations, including the addition of a new head, to the Barberini Venus which he had acquired from Gavin Hamilton. The Venus was then sold to Thomas Jenkins, who in turn passed it on to William Weddell at Newby Hall. In 1767 Pacilli exported a series of ancient busts ‘al naturale’ including portraits of Antinous, Julius Ceaser and Marus Aurelius, also a statue of a Muse and a Venus. As early as 1756 Pacilli seems to have been operating as an antiquarian, helping to disperse the collection of the Villa Borrioni. Pacilli supplied sculpture to notable British collectors, including Charles Townley, who on his first trip to Italy purchased the Palazzo Giustiniani statue of Hecate from Pacilli. Pacilli was involved with the Museo Pio Clementino from its conception, supplying busts of Julius Ceaser and a Roman Woman as well as completing stucco putti surmounting the arms of Pope Bendedict XIV to signal the entrance to the new Museo Critiano.
In 1750 Il Diario Ordinario del Chracas announced that Pacilli had begun work on a sculpture of San Camillo de Lellis for St Peter’s. Camillo de Lellis founded his congregation, the Camillians, with their distinctive red felt crosses stitched on black habits in 1591. Having served as a soldier in the Venetian army, Camillo de Lellis became a novitiate of the Capuchin friars, he moved to Rome and established a religious community for the purpose of caring for the sick. In 1586 Pope Sixtus V formerly recognised the Camillians and assigned them to the Church of Santa Maria Maddalena in Rome. Camillo de Lellis died in 1614 and was entombed at Santa Maria Maddalena, he was canonised by Benedict XIV on June 26, 1746. It was an occasion that prompted the Camillians to make a number of significant artistic commissions, including two canvases by Pierre Subleyras showing episodes from San Camillo’s life which they presented to Benedict XIV. In 1750 Pacilli was commissioned to fill one of the large niches on the north wall of the nave with a sculpture of San Camillo.
The present terracotta bozetto presumably had two important functions, to enable Pacilli to work out his ideas for the finished sculpture and at the same time to show his design to the various commissioning bodies. In this case it would have been Cardinal Alessandro Albani and Monsignor Giovan Francesco Olivieri, the ‘economo’ or treasurer of the fabric of St Peter’s. Previously unrecorded, this terracotta relates to a smaller, less finished model which has recently been identified as being Pacilli’s first idea for his statue of San Camillo. Preserved in Palazzo Venezia, in Rome, the terracotta shows San Camillo with his left hand clutching his vestments to his breast; the pose and action more deliberate and contained than the finished sculpture. In producing the present terracotta Pacilli has expanded and energised the figure. San Camillo is shown with his left hand extended, his head turned to the right, apparently in an attempt to look east down the nave of St Peter’s. The model shows Pacilli experimenting with San Camillo’s costume; prominently on his breast is the red cross of his order, whilst a sense of animation is injected into the figure through the billowing cloak which is pulled across the saint’s projecting right leg. The power of the restrained, axial contrapposto of bent right leg and outstretched left arm, is diminished in the final sculpture where a baroque fussiness is introduced to the drapery. What Pacilli’s terracotta demonstrates, is that he conceived the figure of San Camillo very much in line with the immediate tradition of depicting single figures in St Peter’s; the rhetorical gesture of dynamic saint, arm outstretched, book in hand, head pointed upwards was perhaps borrowed from Camillo Rusconi’s 1733 sculpture of St. Ignatius...
Category
18th Century Baroque Figurative Sculptures
Materials
Terracotta
19th century portrait painted in St Petersburg in 1819
Located in London, GB
Signed, inscribed and dated, lower right:
'Geo Dawe RA St Petersburgh 1819', also signed
with initials, lower centre: 'G D RA'; and signed and inscribed verso:
'Geo Dawe RA Pinxit 1819 St Petersburgh';
Also inscribed on the stretcher by Cornelius Varley with varnishing instructions.
Collections:
Private collection, UK, 2010
Literature:
Galina Andreeva Geniuses of War, Weal and Beauty: George Dawe...
Category
19th Century Old Masters Portrait Paintings
Materials
Oil, Canvas
19th century watercolour of a Girl at her Dressing Table
By William Henry Hunt
Located in London, GB
Collections:
Muir Hetherington;
Sir John and Lady Witt, acquired 1974;
By descent to 2015.
Literature:
Tom Jones (ed.), William Henry Hunt 1790-1864, exh. cat., 1981, no. 145 (Girl in a bedroom);
John Witt, William Henry Hunt (1790-1864) Life and Work, London, 1982, no. 553, p. 194, colour pl. 16.
Exhibited:
Wolverhampton, Central Art Gallery, Preston, Harris Museum and Art Gallery and Hastings, Hastings Museum and Art Gallery, William Henry Hunt 1790-1864, 1981, no. 145 as Girl in a bedroom (Lent by Sir John & Lady Witt)
Framed dimensions: 20 x 20.75 inches
This unusually charming and well-preserved watercolour was painted by William Henry Hunt in around 1833. Almost certainly depicting his young wife, Sarah, possibly in the interior of her family home at Bramley in Hampshire. This work shows Hunt’s remarkable virtuosity as a watercolourist, Hunt, for example, articulates the profile of his young wife, by leaving a reserve of white paper to suggest the light modelling her features. Throughout the 1830s Hunt made a sequence of richly painted interior views of both domestic and agricultural spaces which pay scrupulous attention to detail.
Hunt was born in London, the son of a tin-plate worker and japanner. J. L. Roget recorded the observation of Hunt’s uncle: ‘nervy, little Billy Hunt… was always a poor cripple, and as he was fit for nothing, they made an artist of him.’ At the age of sixteen he was apprenticed to the landscape painter John Varley for seven years, moving to live with Varley at 18 Broad Street, Golden Square, London. There he made close friends with both John Linnell and William Mulready. Hunt worked at the ‘Monro Academy’, at 8 Adelphi Terrace, London, the house of Dr Thomas Monro, an enthusiastic patron of landscape watercolourists. Through Monro, Hunt was introduced to the 5th Earl of Essex...
Category
19th Century Old Masters Figurative Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Pencil, Watercolor
Portraits of the Hon. Mary Shuttleworth and Anna Maria, 9th Baroness Forrester
By Daniel Gardner
Located in London, GB
THE HON. MARY SHUTTLEWORTH, NÉE COCKBURN (D. 1777)
and her sister
ANNA MARIA, 9TH BARONESS FORRESTER (D. 1808)
Pastel and gouache on paper laid on canvas, on their original backb...
Category
18th Century Old Masters Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Gouache, Pastel
18th century portrait drawing of the Rev. William Atkinson
By George Romney
Located in London, GB
Collections:
Henry Scipio Reitlinger (1882-1950);
Private collection, UK to 2019
Framed dimensions: 14.50 x 15.38 inches
This drawing is one of only two known portrait drawings by Romney (as opposed to preliminary studies for portraits) and is dated by Alex Kidson as being executed no later than 1769. It is likely that the present drawing was originally part of a sketchbook, now largely dismembered (Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal), which Kidson notes, contained some of Romney’s most beautiful early drawings. This drawing, and a second sheet formerly with Andrew Wyld, have been identifying as depicting the Rev. William Atkinson...
Category
18th Century Old Masters Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Pencil
20th century oil painting entitled The Unknown Corner
Located in London, GB
Collections:
Robert Isaacson;
James Draper, New York, 2014.
Exhibited:
Cambridge, The Fitzwilliam Museum, Beggarstaffs: William Nicholson and James Pr...
Category
Early 20th Century Modern Figurative Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Regency portrait drawing of Lady Nugent
By John Downman
Located in London, GB
Collections:
With Ellis Smith, London;
Private collection, to 2015.
Literature:
G.C. Williamson, John Downman A.R.A., his Life and Works,
p. lviii no...
Category
19th Century Old Masters Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Watercolor, Pencil
18th century portrait of the Royal Academy model George White
By John Russell
Located in London, GB
Collections:
Russell sale, Christie’s, 14 February, 1807: ‘John Russell, Esq., R.A. deceased, crayon painter to His Majesty, the Prince of Wales, and Duke of York; and brought from his late Dwelling in Newman Street’, lot 92, ‘St Peter’, bt. Thompson (£1.13s);
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, London, 25th September 1980, lot 113;
Private collection, UK, 2016.
Literature:
Martin Postle, 'Patriarchs, prophets and paviours: Reynolds's images of old age', The Burlington Magazine, vol. cxxx, no. 1027, October 1988, pp. 739-40, fig. 9;
Martin Postle, Sir Joshua Reynolds: The Subject Pictures, Cambridge, 1995, p.136, repr.;
Neil Jeffares, Dictionary of pastellists before 1800, online edition, J.64.2928.
Signed and dated: J Russell/ fecit 1772 (lower right)
Framed dimensions: 25 x 31 inches
John Russell was admitted to the Royal Academy in March 1770, at the same time as Daniel Gardner. The nascent Academy Schools were still establishing their teaching structures, but central to the syllabus were the twin components of drawing after the antique and from life models. By 1772 Russell had already been awarded a silver medal and progressed to the life academy, where he produced this remarkable pastel study of George White. White was the most famous model employed by the Royal Academy and prominent artists in the second half of the eighteenth century. A paviour – or street mender –by profession White had been discovered by Joshua Reynolds, who in turn introduced him to the Academy. Russell’s striking head study demonstrates his abilities as a portraitist and pastellist, at the same time showing his interest in the Academy’s preoccupation with promoting history painting.
George White was one of the most celebrated models in eighteenth-century London. According to the painter Joseph Moser:
'Old George…owed the ease in which he passed his latter days, in a great measure to Sir Joshua Reynolds, who found him exerting himself in the laborious employment of thumping down stones in the street; and observing not only the grand and majestic traits of his countenance, but the dignity of his muscular figure, took him out of a situation to which his strength was by no means equal, clothed, fed, and had him, first as a model in his own painting room, then introduced him as a subject for the students of the Royal Academy.'
As Martin Postle has pointed out, whilst characterful studies of old men posed as biblical figures, prophets or saints by Continental old masters were readily available on the art market – Reynolds himself had copied a head of Joab by Federico Bencovich in the collection of his friend and patron, Lord Palmerston - finding a model in Britain from whom to execute a painting was more difficult.
White therefore offered a rare opportunity for artists to combine portraiture and history painting, by painting a model in the guise of an historical or literary character. In 1771 Reynolds showed at the Royal Academy a picture of White entitled Resignation. It was engraved in 1772 and accompanied by a stanza from Oliver Goldsmith’s Deserted Village, implying a literary context to what is essentially a portrait. In his annotated Royal Academy catalogue, Horace Walpole noted: ‘This was an old beggar, who had so fine a head that Sir Joshua chose him for the father in his picture from Dante, and painted him several times, as did others in imitation of Reynolds. There were even cameos and busts of him.’ White sat to, amongst others Johan Zoffany, John Sanders, Nathaniel Hone and the sculptor John Bacon...
Category
18th Century Old Masters Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Pastel
18th century view of the Elephant and Castle in London
Located in London, GB
Collections:
With Martyn Gregory;
Judy Egerton, 1984, acquired from the above;
By descent to 2014.
Exhibited:
London, Martyn Gregory, Exhibition of English & Continental Watercolours, 1984, no. 94.
London, Lowell Libson...
Category
18th Century Old Masters Landscape Paintings
Materials
Vellum, Gouache
Drawing of a captive woman
By Henry Fuseli
Located in London, GB
Collections:
Sir Thomas Lawrence, who acquired the contents of Fuseli’s studio;
Susan, Countess of Guilford, née Coutts (1771-1837), acquired from the Lawrence estate;
Susan, Baroness North (1797-1884), daughter of the above;
Mrs A. M. Jaffé, acquired in France, c. 1950 to 2016.
Black chalks, on buff-coloured paper
Stamped verso: ‘Baroness Norths Collection / of Drawings by H Fuseli Esq.’
Framed dimensions: 26.38 x 20.63 inches
This boldly drawn sheet depicting a seated figure was made by Fuseli at an important and highly productive moment in his career. The monumental drawing is closely related to another sheet by Fuseli in the British Museum which Schiff published as subject unknown. Both drawings were made when Fuseli was designing his most important sequence of historical works, including scenes from Shakespeare and Milton, The Nightmare and The Death of Dido which was exhibited at the Royal Academy to great critical acclaim in 1781. The present drawing does not relate directly to any of Fuseli’s finished historical paintings of the period, but evidently the image of a slightly menacing, seated and covered old woman was precisely the sort of motif he was playing with. It is notable that the same figure reappears later in Fuseli’s work as the witch from Ben Jonson’s Witch’s Song which Fuseli produced as both a painting and engraving in 1812.
Fuseli returned to London in 1779 from a highly creative and productive period in Rome and established himself as one of the leading history painters of the period. Fuseli re-established contact with his old mentor Sir Joshua Reynolds, becoming a regular guest at his dinner table and visitor to his studio. The earliest and most striking manifestation of this strategy was Fuseli's Death of Dido, exhibited in 1781 at the Royal Academy. Executed on the same scale as Reynolds's version (Royal Collection), Fuseli's vertically oriented picture was hung directly opposite Reynolds's with its horizontal orientation, inevitably inviting comparison between the two works and garnering Fuseli much publicity and favourable reviews in the newspapers.
The present, previously unpublished sheet, relates closely to a drawing now in the British Museum. That sheet shows the same seated old woman, drawn on a smaller scale and more schematic in design, seated next to an anatomical drawing of a man. The pose of this figure is related to the pose of Dido in his Death of Dido; the foreshortened torso, arrangement of head, oblique view of Dido’s features and arms all suggest that the study can be viewed as an initial thought for the composition. Fuseli may have initially thought of including the figure of the hunched and covered old woman. Drawn on identical paper to the British Museum sheet, our study is an enlarged depiction of the same figure, more elaborately delineated and developed. The presence of a chain to the right of the figure, suggests that the iconography was related in some way to a scene of imprisonment.
Fuseli had first explored the motif of the hooded old woman in an early Roman drawing, 'The Venus Seller'. The idea of a grotesque old woman, hooded and with angular nose and projecting chin seen in profile was most spectacularly used by Fuseli in his sequence of paintings depicting The Three Witches from Macbeth. Fuseli seems to have kept the present sheet and may have returned to it when preparing a painting of The Witch and the Mandrake from Ben Jonson’s Witch’s Song from his Masque of Queens in 1812. Here the same seated figure looks out from under her hood and picks a mandrake by moonlight. Jonson’s drama had been performed at the court of James I in 1609, inspired the subject. To throw the nobility of the queens into relief, the poet added a coven of witches, one of whom declares: ‘I last night lay all alone, On the ground, to hear the mandrake groan; And plucked him up, though he grew full low, And, as I had done, the cock did crow.’ The figure was reversed in the associated etching which was published in 1812. It seems likely that the present drawing remained as part of Fuseli’s working archive of figure studies.
The present drawing was presumably purchased with the bulk of Fuseli’s drawings after the artist’s death by Sir Thomas Lawrence. Lawrence’s large group of Fuseli drawings were then acquired by Susan, Countess of Guildford (1771-1837). Lady Guildford was the eldest daughter of the banker Thomas Coutts (1735-1822), who himself had supported Fuseli’s journey to Rome in the 1770s and had remained one of the artist’s key...
Category
18th Century Old Masters Figurative Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Chalk
18th century ink study for the Leveson-Gower Children
By George Romney
Located in London, GB
Collections: J. Goodfriend, USA.
Brown wash and pencil on laid paper
Framed dimensions: 13.25 x 11.75 inches
This powerful drawing was made at the time that Romney was painting the famous group portrait of the Gower Children now in Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal. Romney was a bold and incisive draughtsman who made numerous rich brown ink studies, principally for historical compositions; by contrast, comparatively few studies linked directly to his portraits survive. The existence of a group of studies for the Gower Children underscores its importance to Romney. The sitters were the five youngest of the eight children of Granville, 2nd Earl Gower who, at the time the portrait was commissioned, was President of the Council in Lord North’s government and one of the best-connected and most influential people in England. The present drawing which is a large scale treatment of the composition in its final form perfectly distils Romney’s conceit: the younger children dancing whilst their elder sister, in the guise of a Bacchante plays the tambourine. The bold and dramatic study underlines both the artistic confidence and classical grandeur Romney gained during his trip to Italy between 1773 and 1775.
The commission from Granville, 2nd Earl Gower to paint five of his children came shortly after Romney’s Continental tour. The initial idea, as represented by the present drawing, seems to have been to paint Lady Anne, the figure on the right of the composition playing the tambourine, who was the youngest of Gower’s first four children by his second wife Lady Louisa Egerton and who married the Rev. Edward Vernon Harcourt, later Archbishop of York, with three of her younger half-siblings by Gower’s third wife, Lady Susanna Stewart: at the left Lady Georgina, who became Countess of St Germans following her marriage to the Hon. William Eliot; at the right Lady Charlotte Sophia, later Duchess of Beaufort and in the centre Lady Susanna, later Countess of Harrowby. Romney added a fifth child to the finished portrait, Gower’s son: Lord Granville, later created Viscount Granville and Earl Granville. In Italy Romney had produced a large number of studies of classical antiquities and old master paintings.
The commission from Gower offered Romney the opportunity to explore a complex multi-figural group, putting into practice the kind of ambitious classical quotations that Reynolds was currently exploiting. In 1773 Reynolds had completed the remarkable group portrait of the Montgomery Sisters, now in the Tate Gallery, London, which showed them adorning a herm of the Roman god Hymen; the composition used a garland to link the three figures who were shown in classical costume dancing at the foot of a Roman sculpture. Scholars have long pointed to a similar sources for the two compositions: the works of Nicolas Poussin. Whilst the Montgomery Sisters is based, in part, on a Bacchanal now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, the Gower Children has always been associated with Poussin’s Dance to the Music of Time, now in the Wallace Collection, London. It seems more likely that Romney was looking to an antique source in the form of the Borghese Dancers, a Roman relief, then in Palazzo Borghese in Rome. Romney would have seen the relief of interlocking, dancing maidens and would also have known Guido Reni’s Aurora...
Category
18th Century Old Masters Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Pencil, Ink
18th century pastel portrait of Lady Augusta Corbett and her son, Stuart
By Daniel Gardner
Located in London, GB
Collections:
Commissioned by Andrew Corbett, husband of the sitter;
The Venerable Stuart Corbett;
Sir Stuart Corbett;
By descent to 2002;
Sotheby’s, London 21 March 2002, lot.104;
Lowell Libson...
Category
18th Century Old Masters Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Gouache, Pastel
Portrait drawing of Harriot Mellon, Mrs Thomas Coutts
By Henry Fuseli
Located in London, GB
Inscribed by the artist in pen and brown ink, upper margin: 'σοφὴν δὲ μισῶ: μὴ γὰρ ἔν γ' ἐμοῖς δόμοις / εἴη φρονοῦσα πλείον' ἢ γυναῖκα χρή [Euripides, Hippolytus, 11, 640-41: “But a ...
Category
19th Century Old Masters Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Pencil
Regency portrait drawing of Arabella Graham-Clarke
By John Downman
Located in London, GB
Collections:
The sitter, and by descent;
Christie's, 19th March 1928, lot 6;
Private collection to 2019
Literature:
G.C. Williamson, John Downman, A.R.A., his Life and Works, Lon...
Category
Early 19th Century Old Masters Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Watercolor, Pencil
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François-Édouard Picot (French 1786-1868) Greek Comedy Play 19th Century Drawing
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Located in Meinisberg, CH
François-Édouard Picot
(French, 1786 – 1868)
Ancient Greek Comedy Play
• Pencil Drawing on laid paper behind decorative matting, visible image, ca. 10.5 x 15.5 cm
• Modern Glased frame, ca. 27 x 33 cm
• Signed "Picot fecit" lower left
• As we photographed through glass, there are reflections in the images
Worldwide shipping is complimentary - There are no charges for handling & delivery
Here we have the somewhat unusual, yet typical subject matter François-Édouard Picot was interested in depicting. Shown is a scene from an ancient Greek comedy play. The previous owner has noted on the back, that this image was copied from an ancient Greek stone relief.
François-Édouard Picot was born on the 10th of October in 1786 in Paris, France. He studied with various masters and became well known for his historical and mythological subjects. In 1812 he won the second prize in the Prix de Rome competition and after that success, went on to exhibit at the Paris Salon, where in the year 1819 he won a first-class medal for his neoclassical L'Amour et Psyché, which today hangs in the Louvre in Paris. He regularly exhibited his work in the salon up to 1839. He taught several young great artists at his elitist studio and was known for accepting only very few students, which included William Bouguereau, Gustave Moreau, Cabanel and Paul Seignac...
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Choosing to acquire an 18th-century portrait of a young girl by English artist John Russell is an opportunity to...
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Located in Harkstead, GB
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H 6.5 in W 5 in D 1 in
Huge Antique Oil Painting Portrait of Mrs Boone & Daughter after lost original
Located in Cirencester, Gloucestershire
After SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS
(1723 -1792)
Portrait of Mrs Boone and her Daughter
Oil on Canvas
Canvas Size : 55.25 x 43.25 inches (140 x 110 cms)
Framed size : 62 x 50 inches (157.5 x 127 cms)
Provenance : Private Collection, France
This present picture is a good quality copy of a Reynolds original. Copies are notoriously
difficult to date, but judging by the style and the materials used it is most probable that we are
dealing with a picture painted between 1890 and 1920. The professional standard of the work
makes this painting a fine and substantial piece of decoration in the 18th century English
manner. But in this case there is more…
The Reynolds original was painted around 1774-6 and depicts Harriet Boone, wife of Charles
Boone with their daughter, also Harriet – later the wife of Sir William Drummond K.C. This
picture was by 1865 in the collection of one T Colleton Garth (a relative of the younger
Harriet Boone), who lent it to an exhibition of Old Master pictures at the British Institution in
1865. It was engraved in 1866 by G.H. Emery – presumably after attracting some attention at
that exhibition. The painting was then bought from Garth by the dealers Agnew in 1903 and
sold the following year in 1904 to the famous Anglo-German diamond magnate Alfred Beit.
Two years later in 1906, Beit - who would fill his later years with numerous philanthropic
donations in Germany, England and South Africa - gave the Reynolds original of Mrs Boone
to the Berlin Gallery...
Category
Late 19th Century Old Masters Portrait Paintings
Materials
Oil, Canvas
The Abduction of the Sabine Women , a Renaissance drawing by Biagio Pupini
Located in PARIS, FR
This vigorous drawing has long been attributed to Polidoro da Caravaggio: The Abduction of the Sabine Women is one of the scenes that Polidoro depicted between 1525 and 1527 on the façade of the Milesi Palazzo in Rome. However, the proximity to another drawing inspired by this same façade, kept at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and to other drawings inspired by Polidoro kept at the Musée du Louvre, leads us to propose an attribution to Biagio Pupini, a Bolognese artist whose life remains barely known, despite the abundant number of drawings attributed to him.
1. Biagio Pupini, a Bolognese artist in the light of the Roman Renaissance
The early life of Biagio Pupini, an important figure of the first half of the Cinquecento in Bologna - Vasari mentions him several times - is still poorly known. Neither his date of birth (probably around 1490-1495) nor his training are known. He is said to have been a pupil of Francesco Francia (1450 - 1517) and his name appears for the first time in 1511 in a contract with the painter Bagnacavallo (c. 1484 - 1542) for the frescoes of a church in Faenza. He then collaborated with Girolamo da Carpi, at San Michele in Bosco and at the villa of Belriguardo.
He must have gone to Rome for the first time with Bagnacavallo between 1511 and 1519. There he discovered the art of Raphael, with whom he might have worked, and that of Polidoro da Caravaggio. This first visit, and those that followed, were the occasion for an intense study of ancient and modern art, as illustrated by his abundant graphic production.
Polidoro da Caravaggio had a particular influence on the technique adopted by Pupini. Executed on coloured paper, his drawings generally combine pen, brown ink and wash with abundant highlights of white gouache, as in the drawing presented here.
2. The Abduction of the Sabine Women
Our drawing is an adaptation of a fresco painted between 1525 and 1527 by Polidoro da Caravaggio on the façade of the Milesi Palace in Rome. These painted façades were very famous from the moment they were painted and inspired many artists during their stay in Rome. These frescoes are now very deteriorated and difficult to see, as the palace is in a rather narrow street.
The episode of the abduction of the Sabine women (which appears in the centre of the photo above) is a historical theme that goes back to the origins of Rome and is recounted both by Titus Livius (Ab Urbe condita I,13), by Ovid (Fasti III, 199-228) and by Plutarch (II, Romulus 14-19). After killing his twin brother Romus, Romulus populates the city of Rome by opening it up to refugees and brigands and finds himself with an excess of men. Because of their reputation, none of the inhabitants of the neighbouring cities want to give them their daughters in marriage. The Romans then decide to invite their Sabine neighbours to a great feast during which they slaughter the Sabines and kidnap their daughters.
The engraving made by Giovanni Battista Gallestruzzi (1618 - 1677) around 1656-1658 gives us a good understanding of the Polidoro fresco, allowing us to see how Biagio Pupini reworked the scene to extract this dynamic group.
With a remarkable economy of means, Biagio Pupini takes over the left-hand side of the fresco and depicts in a very dense space two main groups, each consisting of a Roman and a Sabine, completed by a group of three soldiers in the background (which seems to differ quite significantly from Polidoro's composition).
The balance of the drawing is based on a very strongly structured composition. The drawing is organised around a median vertical axis, which runs along both the elbow of the kidnapped Sabine on the left and the foot of her captor, and the two main diagonals, reinforced by four secondary diagonals. This diamond-shaped structure creates an extremely dynamic space, in which centripetal movements (the legs of the Sabine on the right, the arm of the soldier on the back at the top right) and centrifugal movements (the arm of the kidnapper on the left and the legs of the Sabine he is carrying away, the arm of the Sabine on the right) oppose each other, giving the drawing the appearance of a whirlpool around a central point of support situated slightly to the left of the navel of the kidnapper on the right.
3. Polidoro da Caravaggio, and the decorations of Roman palaces
Polidoro da Caravaggio was a paradoxical artist who entered Raphael's (1483 - 1520) workshop at a very young age, when he oversaw the Lodges in the Vatican. Most of his Roman work, which was the peak of his career, has disappeared, as he specialised in facade painting, and yet these paintings, which are eminently visible in urban spaces, have influenced generations of artists who copied them abundantly during their visits to Rome.
Polidoro Caldara was born in Caravaggio around 1495-1500 (the birthplace of Michelangelo Merisi, known as Caravaggio, who was born there in 1571), some forty kilometres east of Milan. According to Vasari, he arrived as a mason on the Vatican's construction site and joined Raphael's workshop around 1517 (at the age of eighteen according to Vasari). This integration would have allowed Polidoro to work not only on the frescoes of the Lodges, but also on some of the frescoes of the Chambers, as well as on the flat of Cardinal Bibiena in the Vatican.
After Raphael's death in 1520, Polidoro worked first with Perin del Vaga before joining forces with Maturino of Florence (1490 - 1528), whom he had also known in Raphael's workshop. Together they specialised in the painting of palace façades. They were to produce some forty façades decorated with grisaille paintings imitating antique bas-reliefs.
The Sack of Rome in 1527, during which his friend Maturino was killed, led Polidoro to flee first to Naples (where he had already stayed in 1523), then to Messina. It was while he was preparing his return to the peninsula that he was murdered by one of his assistants, Tonno Calabrese, in 1543.
In his Vite, Vasari celebrated Polidoro as the greatest façade decorator of his time, noting that "there is no flat, palace, garden or villa in Rome that does not contain a work by Polidoro". Polidoro's facade decorations, most of which have disappeared as they were displayed in the open air, constitute the most important lost chapter of Roman art of the Cinquecento. The few surviving drawings of the painter can, however, give an idea of the original appearance of his murals and show that he was an artist of remarkable and highly original genius.
4. The façade of the Milesi Palace
Giovanni Antonio Milesi, who commissioned this palace, located not far from the Tiber, north of Piazza Navona, was a native of the Bergamo area, like Polidoro, with whom he maintained close friendly ties. Executed in the last years before the Sack of Rome, around 1526-1527, the decoration of Palazzo Milesi is considered Polidoro's greatest decorative success.
An engraving by Ernesto Maccari made at the end of the nineteenth century allows us to understand the general balance of this façade, which was still well preserved at the time. The frescoes were not entirely monochrome, but alternated elements in chiaroscuro simulating marble bas-reliefs and those in ochre simulating bronze and gold vases...
Category
16th Century Old Masters Figurative Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
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Erotic Mythological Marble Figural, Nude woman, Bacchante and Satyr Herm
Located in Miami, FL
A sexy and nude curvaceous young Nymph/Bacchante makes amorous advances to a Herm - whose facial expression reflects her erotic touch. The Herm is stylized where his upper torso is c...
Category
Mid-19th Century Old Masters Nude Sculptures
Materials
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H 54.5 in W 24 in D 13.5 in
Job Cursed by His Wife
By Giovanni Battista Langetti
Located in New York, NY
Provenance:
Alfred (1883-1961) and Hermine Stiassni (1889-1962), Brno, Czech Republic, by 1925; thence London, 1938-1940; thence Los Angeles, 1940-1962; thence by descent to:
Susanne Stiassni Martin and Leonard Martin, San Francisco, until 2005; thence by descent to:
Private Collection, California
Exhibited:
Künstlerhaus, Brünn (Brno), 1925, as by Ribera.
“Art of Collecting,” Flint Institute of Art, Flint, Michigan, 23 November 2018 – 6 January 2019.
Literature:
Alte Meister...
Category
1670s Old Masters Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Huge 18th Century English Oil Aristocratic Portrait of a Gentleman Standing
Located in Cirencester, Gloucestershire
Portrait of an Aristocratic Gentleman
British artist, first half 18th century
oil on canvas, unframed
canvas: 50 x 40 inches
provenance: private collection, Dorset, England
condition...
Category
18th Century Old Masters Portrait Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Pair Bas-reliefs Spring Autumn Flemish Sculptor 17th Century Wood
Located in Riva del Garda, IT
Antichità Castelbarco SRLS is proud to present:
Flemish sculptor of the 17th century
Pair of bas-relief panels depicting the Allegory of Spring and the Allegory of Autumn
Oak wood
...
Category
17th Century Old Masters Sculptures
Materials
Wood
1 bid
H 17.72 in W 5.52 in
Neoclassical sculpture in Rome- Pair of 19th century Italian scagliola - Figures
Located in Varmo, IT
Pair of scagliola sculptures - Roman figures. Italy, 19th century.
51 x 26 x h 118 cm (left) - 41 x 28 x h 118 cm (right).
Entirely in scagliola.
Condition report: In good general...
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Early 19th Century Old Masters Figurative Sculptures
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H 46.46 in W 20.08 in D 10.24 in
17th Century Flemish Sculpture of a Religious Figure
Located in Rochester, NY
Antique carving of a saint or martyr. 17th century Flemish hardwood carving. Wonderful wear and rich color.
Category
17th Century Old Masters Figurative Sculptures
Materials
Wood
Boissier, Portrait of a Young Man, 1802, Pastel signed and dated
By Boissier
Located in Paris, FR
Boissier (painter and portraitist active at the end of the 18th century)
Portrait of a young man
Signed and dated "Boissier f(ecit) 1802" on the lower right
Pastel on paper transfere...
Category
Early 1800s Old Masters Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
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Previously Available Items
Portrait of Marianne Langham
Located in London, GB
Collections:
Sir James Langham, 7th Bt, father of the sitter, Cottesbrooke Park Northamptonshire;
and by descent in the Langham family at Cottesbrooke until 1909, when the family po...
Category
19th Century Old Masters Portrait Paintings
Materials
Oil, Panel
20th century oil depicting an Architectural Fantasy with Figures
Located in London, GB
Collections:
James Murray Allison;
Savage Club, London, presented by the above to the Savage Club, April 1926;
Robert Isaacson;
James Draper, New York, ...
Category
Early 20th Century Modern Figurative Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
18th century painting of a bandit taking up his post
By John Hamilton Mortimer
Located in London, GB
Collections:
Pulteney Hotel, Bath;
Private collection, Denmark;
Christian B. Peper, acquired in 1985, to 2012.
Literature:
G. Benthall, John Hamilton Mortimer ARA: Drawing and Eng...
Category
18th Century Old Masters Figurative Paintings
Materials
Oil, Canvas
18th century pastel portrait of Lady Norris
Located in London, GB
Collections:
Christie’s, 16 March 1923;
Sir James Roberts (1848-1935), (35 gns);
Roberts sale, Christie’s 20 March 1936,
Howard Young;
Meinhard Galleries Houston, Texas;
Private collection, London to 2017
Literature:
Neil Jeffares, Dictionary of Pastellists Before 1800, online edition, Cat. No. J.395.145.
Framed dimensions: 32 x 26.25 inches
This beautifully preserved example of Hoare’s work demonstrates why he was so in demand by contemporaries and considered the finest exponent of the ‘darling modish study’ of pastel. Hoare trained in London in the 1720s with the Italian painter Giuseppe Grisoni whom he accompanied to Italy in 1728. In Rome he studied under Francesco Fernandi ‘Imperiali’ at the same time as Pompeo Batoni. As Evelyn Newby pointed out, it was here that Hoare almost certainly encountered the work in pastel of Bernardo Luti. Back in Britain Hoare took the unusual decision to settle in Bath, a decision calculated to capitalise on Bath’s growing position as a resort town. Hoare was at the forefront of the burgeoning fashion for pastel portraits. Pastels had several distinct advantages, they could be worked rapidly in one or two sittings, the lustrous, refractive surface gave them a highly decorative quality, one enhanced by the need to keep them under glass and house them in giltwood frames. George Vertue noted that Hoare charged 5 guineas for a pastel or 8 guineas to have it framed and glazed in 1738; in 1742, he stated that Hoare was responsible for the fashion for pastel portraiture, adding, in 1749 that he ‘has had better success than any other painter there [Bath] before him.’ Hoare’s success prompted other painters to follow him to Bath, making it an alternative centre for the eighteenth-century art world.
The present magnificent portrait, made in pastel on blue paper, stretched over canvas, is typical of Hoare’s mature work. The beautiful, youthful sitter is rendered exquisitely in pastel whilst her lavish costume is handled with a daring freedom, with passages suggestive of oil paint. The present portrait is someone mysterious. It is first recorded at a Christie’s sale in 1923 where it was identified as depicting ‘Lady Norris’, it is not immediately apparent who the sitter is, as no Norris baronets or baronies were extant in the mid-eighteenth century. Its reappearance in 1923 and subsequent acquisition by Sir James Roberts is emblematic of the extraordinary vogue for eighteenth-century British portraiture in the first quarter of the twentieth century. A pretty young woman dressed in lush pink and ivory silks captured in dazzling pastel, this portrait would have appealed to the transatlantic passion for eighteenth-century British portraiture. Roberts was a hugely successful Yorkshire industrialist who built up a substantial collection of British pictures...
Category
18th Century Old Masters Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Pastel
18th century oil capriccio of Rome
By Arthur Devis
Located in London, GB
Collections:
Probably Anthony Devis, half-brother of Arthur Devis;
Ellin Devis, Arthur Devis’s daughter, a gift from the above;
Ellin Devis Marris, adopted daughter of the above, by bequest in 1820;
Arthur Tooth & Sons Ltd (as by Panini);
Private collection, UK, 1987;
The Leger Galleries, 1987;
The Hon. Simon Sainsbury, acquired from the above in 1987;
Sainsbury sale, Christie’s, 18th June 2008, lot 205 [the literature cited incorrectly in Christie’s catalogue entry applies to the painting listed by D’Oench (1979) as no. 272];
Private collection, 2013.
Literature:
Ellen Gates D’Oench, Arthur Devis (1712-1787); Master of the Georgian Conversation Piece, A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Yale University in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, 1979, cat. no. 272.
Signed and dated ADevis 1736, lower centre
Framed dimensions: 31.5 x 36 inches
Arthur Devis is best known as a master of conversation pieces and full-length portraits in small scale, described by Sacheverell Sitwell as ‘the perfect small master of the school.’ His work as a painter of landscapes and architectural capriccios is less well known. This previously unpublished ruinscape, made in the manner Giovanni Paolo Panini, sheds important light on his early career and crucially, his working methods. Signed and dated 1736, Devis evidently retained an affection for the painting, incorporating it into at least two of his interior conversation pieces. This catalogue entry contains important new information on Devis’s early career and art training in the north-west of Britain in the 1730s, as well as reproducing extracts from the unpublished will of Devis’s daughter.
Born in Preston, Lancashire in 1712 Devis’s early training took place in the north-west where he worked with the Flemish painter Peter Tillemans. Tillemans seems to have spent time at Knowsley Hall in Lancashire in 1728-9, completing a number of spectacular landscapes depicting the house, park and James Stanley, 10th Earl of Derby’s racecourse. It is clear from the surviving correspondence of the 10th Earl that Knowsley, with its substantial collection of old master paintings, became an important site for artists in the region. We know at least one other of Tillemans’s pupils, one Edward Coppock, stayed at Knowsley learning to draw, and in 1736 George Stubbs arrived to copy paintings, supervised by his master, Hamlet Winstanley. According to Stubbs’s earliest biographer, Ozias Humphry, the first picture he attempted to copy at Knowsley was a ruinscape by Giovanni Paolo Panini.
It is highly suggestive that at the same date Devis was also completing a work strongly influenced by the Italian painter Panini. Further investigation reveals that the present painting, which is not a copy of any existing Panini design, but is in fact a composition directly derived from a drawing by Hamlet Winstanley and contained in a sketchbook now in the Warrington Museum and Art Gallery. Winstanley had visited Italy in 1723–1725 and filled a sketchbook with topographical landscape drawings and subsequently produced a number of capriccio studies derived from these accurate drawings. One such sheet depicts the Castel Sant’Angelo behind a classical church and campanile identical to the buildings on the right hand side of Devis’s painting. Devis’s use of such an idiosyncratic set of structures seems certain to have derived from Winstanley’s drawing adding further to the supposition that Devis trained at Knowsley and continued to have contact there throughout his early years in Preston.
Turning to the painting itself, it appears to be a conventional digest of classic Roman monuments, arranged to form a fanciful ruinscape. On the far left of the composition are the three columns of the Temple of Castor and Pollux from the Forum in Rome; in the left foreground is the remains of a torso of Venus; prominently in the background is Trajan’s Column and behind it the dome of Santa Maria di Loreto; to the right a profile of the Capitoline and on the far right the group of buildings borrowed from Winstanley’s drawing. Standing amongst the ruins are a group of figures, in vaguely classical costume, in discussion. The works of Giovanni Paolo Panini were extremely fashionable amongst British collectors from the mid-1730s onwards, Devis’s painting and more importantly his conduit, in the form of Winstanley’s Italian drawings, were a very early instance of British artists imitating this format. In the following generation countless British painters would replicate Panini’s designs as decorative additions to interiors as new Palladian designs demanded painted overmantels and overdoors, but Devis’s signed and dated composition was absolutely at the forefront of this fashion.
Given the squareish format of the present painting it seems likely that it was designed as an overdoor. This is confirmed by Devis’s inclusion of the present composition in at least two of his earliest conversation pieces. The profile of the three columns from the Temple of Castor and Pollux, Venus’s torso...
Category
18th Century Old Masters Figurative Paintings
Materials
Oil, Canvas
