Portrait of a Gentleman, c. 1740/1750

Not on View

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 127 x 101.7 cm (50 x 40 1/16 in.)

framed: 150.5 x 125.7 x 4.4 cm (59 1/4 x 49 1/2 x 1 3/4 in.)

Credit Line

Andrew W. Mellon Collection

Accession Number

1947.17.49

Artists / Makers

British 18th Century (painter)

Image Use

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Inscription

falsely signed and dated, lower left in red paint: R.F. Pinx / 1748.

Provenance

(Rose M. [Mrs. Augustus] de Forest, New York); sold 29 September 1930 to Thomas B. Clarke [1848-1931], New York, as a portrait of Judge Foster Hutchinson by Robert Feke;[1] sold by Clarke's executors to (M. Knoedler & Co., New York), from whom it was purchased 29 January 1936, as part of the Clarke collection, by The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh; gift to NGA, 1947.

[1] According to 1928 Clarke exhibition catalogue annotated with information from files of M. Knoedler & Co., NY (copy in NGA curatorial records and in NGA library). The provenance from the Trowbridge family of Massachusetts, supplied by the dealer, de Forest, has been shown by archival research to be spurious. Clifford K. Shipton, letter, 6 September 1949, in NGA curatorial files.

Associated Names

Clarke, Thomas Benedict
Knoedler & Company, M.
Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, The A.W.
de Forest, Rose M.

Technical Summary

The fine canvas is plain woven; it has been lined. The ground is a translucent white with additives that may be chalk with an admixture of white lead. The painting is executed in opaque, smoothly applied layers slightly thicker in the figure than in the background; the forms are broad and generalized, and there is little articulation of detail. The painting has been abraded by solvent action, most noticeably in the background and dark areas. The inscription is evidently of later date since it was painted over cracks and abrasions. There is marked craquelure, but little retouching. The thick, uneven natural resin varnish has discolored moderately.

Bibliography

1930: Foote, Henry Wilder. Robert Feke, Colonial Portrait Painter. Cambridge, Mass., 1930: supplementary note between x and xi.

1970: American Paintings and Sculpture: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1970: 166, repro., as Portrait of a Man.

1975: European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 46, repro., as Portrait of a Man.

1980: American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 308, as Portrait of a Man by Unknown [Formerly Considered American].

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 20, repro.

1992: Hayes, John. British Paintings of the Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1992: 297-298, repro. 298.