Portrait of a Gentleman
c. 1726/1740
Painter

Artwork overview
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Medium
oil on canvas
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Credit Line
-
Dimensions
overall: 127.2 x 101.6 cm (50 1/16 x 40 in.)
framed: 143.5 x 119.4 x 6.4 cm (56 1/2 x 47 x 2 1/2 in.) -
Accession
1947.17.22
Artwork history & notes
Provenance
Perhaps (Copley Gallery, Boston). (Robert C. Vose, Boston); sold 21 August 1930 to Thomas B. Clarke [1848-1931], New York, as a portrait of Robert Auchmuty by Joseph Badger;[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 Samuel Auchmuty, son of the supposed sitter, supplied to the Robert C. Vose by the dealer Rose M. de Forest, has been questioned by John Hill Morgan (undated note in NGA curatorial files) and cannot be verified.
Associated Names
Exhibition History
1930
Colonial Portraits, Robert C. Vose Galleries, Boston, 1930, no. 6.
Bibliography
1957
Sellers, Charles Coleman. "Mezzotint Prototypes of Colonial Portraiture." The Art Quarterly 20 (1957): no. 14B, repro.
1970
American Paintings and Sculpture: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1970: 158, repro., as Portrait of a Man by American (?).
1980
American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 306, as Portrait of a Man by Unknown [Formerly Considered American].
1985
European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 408, 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: 312-313, repro. 313.
Wikidata ID
Q20177828