Portrait of a Gentleman

c. 1710/1720

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Andrew W. Mellon Collection

  • 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.)

  • Accession

    1947.17.94

Media for this artwork is unavailable and the object is not on view. See artworks now on view

Artwork history & notes

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

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.

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.

Inscriptions

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

Wikidata ID

Q20177758

You may be interested in

Loading Results