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When the Puritans came to power in Britain, representations of religious subjects and nude classical heroes were deemed sinful, so portraiture and landscape rose in popularity. Also, in an era of social flux, the portrait can establish the subject within a privileged family.
1. Francis Cotes, Arthur Maister of Hull,
c. 1764-66, OIL ON CANVAS,
25 x 30 IN.
Francis Cotes (1726-70) was a founding member of the Royal Academy, but an accidental poisoning killed him at the height of his powers. Joshua Reynolds, George Romney and Thomas Gainsborough all outlived him by decades and eclipsed him in the process. Interest in Cotes was renewed only in the 20th century, when the demand in America for British portraits rose.
Renowned as a pastel artist, Cotes achieved his mature style by transferring the best features of his pastels – delicate lines and skillfully blended colors – to his half-length oil portraits of gentlemen. Arthur Maister, exemplary of that premise, is layered with fine applications of paint. Though Maister’s clothing has been incorrectly identified as mayoral (partly because of the gold trim and tie), the fur-lined scarlet cloak is actually the garb of a Russian merchant – Maister having spent 13 years in St. Petersburg, running one of his family’s businesses, before sitting for his stately portrait.
2. Benjamin West,
Mr. John Utterson of Fareham, Hampshire,
1769, OIL ON CANVAS,
30 x 25 IN.
Benjamin West (1738-1820) had a brilliant career, becoming in 1768 one of the founders of the Royal Academy and in 1772 a historical painter in the court of George III. In 1792, he succeeded Reynolds as president of the Royal Academy, serving until 1805 and then again from 1807 to 1820. As a portraitist – in his day, one of London’s most fashionable – he painted with a signature immediacy and candor. Mr. John Utterson of Fareham, Hampshire (1769), is an excellent example of West’s “Early English” style. The sitter, possibly a well-to-do Quaker, is posed traditionally and rendered with a sensitive attention both to skin tones and textures – so much so that the coat and vest can be identified as wool broadcloth and the coat’s collar as velvet.
3. Angelica Kauffmann, Isabella Hunter formerly Mrs. Anne Downman,
c. 1776-90, OIL ON CANVAS,
30 25 IN.
Originally in the provenance of the Hon. B. Downman, this portrait was mistitled Mrs. Anne Downman when Fisher Gallery received it in 1939. An inquiry into the sitter’s identity led to John Downman, Kauffmann’s fellow portraitist and Royal Academician. In his portfolio was a drawing almost identical to Kauffmann’s oil; further investigation found that it was a drawing of Kauffmann’s portrait of his cousin Isabella Hunter. So, Isabella Hunter it is.
The Swiss Angelica Kauffmann (1741-1807) was remarkable in many ways. Recognized as a child prodigy in adolescence, she was by age 16 assisting her father, a minor Vorarlberg painter, on church commissions. She moved to London in 1776 and in the mere 15 years she spent there became a founding member of the Royal Academy, collaborated on interiors with architect Robert Adam and achieved stunning popularity with royal families and the aristocracy. She received so many commissions that, according to critics, her paintings became routine – smooth and superficially appealing portraits, mostly of women, whom she endowed with sweet melancholy looks and allegorized by the inclusion of small animals. More sympathetic observers note that Kauffmann’s work shares many features with the Neoclassical Reynolds and Anton Mengs and that her draughtsmanship demonstrates a bold, free and even modern technique.
4. George Romney, Emma, Lady Hamilton,
OIL ON CANVAS SKETCH, 27x25 IN.
George Romney (1734-1802) is considered – along with Gainsborough and Reynolds – one of the most important British portrait painters of the 18th century. For all his skill, however, he may not have been as well-remembered as he is if it were not for his most frequent sitter: Emily Hart, later the Lady Emma Hamilton.
The daughter of a blacksmith, she became attached to the Hon. Charles Greville, who provided her with some education and gave her lessons in singing, dancing and acting; he also introduced her to Romney, who immortalized her in numerous literary and mythic poses. Greville’s uncle, Sir William Hamilton, the British envoy at Naples, conceived a passion for his nephew’s mistress. She married Hamilton in 1791, acquiring the title of Lady; with revolutions and other political disturbances in the air, she is said to have facilitated Viscount Horatio Nelson’s victory over the French in the Nile campaign by securing stores and water for the British fleet in Sicily. Nelson – by then a one-eyed, one-armed hero – fell in love with Lady Hamilton and she with him. Back home, she gave birth to Nelson’s daughter, named appropriately enough, Horatia. After the death of her husband in 1803, she lived openly with Nelson at Merton. Two years later, Nelson died at his greatest victory, Trafalgar (1805). Emma died in poverty in Calais in 1815.
5. Thomas Gainsborough, Mrs. Burroughs,
1769, OIL ON CANVAS,
30x25 IN.
Though Thomas Gainsborough was a Royal Academician, his style was almost opposite to the one advocated by Reynolds. Instead of a rational, classically-based approach, the largely self-taught Gainsborough developed a lyrical, painterly brush stroke. When he won the favor of George III, he further alienated Reynolds; by the 1780s, following some dispute, Gainsbor-ough retired from the Academy entirely and began arranging exhibits in his own home.
The portrait of Mrs. Burroughs – his aunt by marriage and wife of the Reverend who was headmaster at his boyhood school – dates to the period (1759-74) when Gainsborough lived in Bath and developed his highly personal style of portraiture. His portrait of Reverend Burroughs, pendent to the Fisher portrait, is in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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