Portrait of a Gentleman, c. 1710/1720

Not on View

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 76.2 x 63.5 cm (30 x 25 in.)

framed: 101 x 88.9 x 7 cm (39 3/4 x 35 x 2 3/4 in.)

Credit Line

Andrew W. Mellon Collection

Accession Number

1947.17.94

Artists / Makers

British 18th Century (painter)

Image Use

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Inscription

falsely signed and dated, lower right: Jo. Smibert ft., 173[9] (the last digit not fully legible)

Provenance

(Rose M. [Mrs. Augustus] de Forest, New York); sold 13 January 1919 to Thomas B. Clarke [1848-1931], New York, as a portrait of William Shirley by John Smibert;[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 William Shirley, son of the supposed sitter, supplied by the dealer, de Forest, cannot be verified, and was questioned by Henry Wilder Foote in John Smibert (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1950), 244.

Associated Names

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

Exhibition History

1921: Exhibition of Paintings by Early American Portrait Painters, The Union League Club, New York, November 1921, no. 19, as Governor William Shirley by John Smibert.

1928: Portraits by Early American Artists of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, Collected by Thomas B. Clarke, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1928-1931, unnumbered and unpaginated catalogue, as Governor William Shirley by John Smibert.

1939: American Historical Paintings, Golden Gate International Exposition, San Francisco, 1939, no. 21.

Technical Summary

The medium-weight canvas is plain woven; it has been lined. The ground is pale gray or beige, thinly applied. The painting is executed in smoothly blended layers in the face and hair, with unblended, drier brushwork in the drapery; there is low brushwork texture in most of the lighter areas. The background gray ends in curved forms in the upper corners, as if the painting were meant to be an oval. The "signature" was found in 1965 to be a recent addition, applied over already abraded paint and readily soluble. The contours of the face and cravat, and parts of the hair, are severely abraded; the background is slightly abraded. There is a band of overpainted losses along the bottom edge, and more recent retouching along the contour on the right side of the sitter's face, in the bottom left corner, and above the "signature." The thick, natural resin varnish has discolored to a significant degree.

Bibliography

1950: Foote, Henry Wilder. John Smibert. Cambridge, Mass., 1950: 94n., 109, 244.

1970: American Paintings and Sculpture: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1970: 162, repro., as Portrait of a Man by American (?).

1980: American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 309, as Portrait of a Man by Unknown [Formerly Considered American].

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 413, repro., as Portrait of a Man by Unknown Nationality 18th Century.

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: 296-297, repro. 297.