Provenance

Thomas Lister Parker

British, 1779 - 1858

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This painting depicts the upper half of a seated young woman who is facing forward. She has fair skin, pale eyebrows, gray eyes, and thin lips in a neutral expression. The right side of her face is partially in shadow. Her light brown hair is styled up with a blue ribbon and pearl ornaments. She wears a black dress with lace detailing, a red gem, and pearl strands at the neckline. The dress also features blue slits in the arms, blue bows at each elbow, and lace cuffs at the end of the long sleeves. She wears a pearl necklace with a blue bow in the back and holds a small white dog on her lap. The background is dark brown, with a vertical strip of lighter brown on the right.
Sir Joshua Reynolds, Miss Beatrix Lister, 1765, oil on canvas, Gift of Margaret Mellon Hitchcock, 1995.3.1

Miss Beatrix Lister

Sir Joshua Reynolds · 1765 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1995.3.1

We look across churning waves at four sailing ships and a wooden rowboat with four men aboard in this horizontal painting. Dark, iron-gray and tawny-brown clouds approaching from the right fill the top two-thirds of the composition. The water closest to us roils with steel gray and tan, which deepens to charcoal gray as it recedes toward low hills in the distant background. In the lower left corner of the painting, a wooden container bobs in the waves, and a white bird flies low over the water nearby. Two ships to the left of center head directly toward us, leaning steeply to our left with their beige sails taut with wind. Two men, tiny in scale, stand on the deck of the ship to our left. To our right, two ships with butter-yellow and peach sails cut through the water. Three men stand on the deck of the ship in the front, pulling on the rigging. Closest to us and to the right of center, the rowboat crests a wave, tilting forward so we look into the long side of the boat and see the four men there. Near the stern, one man hangs over the side while another holds onto him. Two men sit to the right, one facing us while the other faces away. Sunlight streaks down through a break in the storm clouds to fall on a ship with furled sails in the distance at the center of the composition. This and two additional ships near the distant shoreline are silhouetted against bands of white clouds around blue sky, beyond the bank of dark gray clouds closer to us.
Joseph Mallord William Turner, The Junction of the Thames and the Medway, 1807, oil on canvas, Widener Collection, 1942.9.87

The Junction of the Thames and the Medway

Joseph Mallord William Turner · 1807 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1942.9.87

Bibliography

1858

  • Gentleman's Magazine 49 (1858): 447 [obituary]

1915

  • Parker, Thomas Lister. Description of Browsholme Hall in the West Riding of the County of York. 1915

1975

  • Brown, David. "Turner, Callcott and Thomas Lister Parker..." Burlington Magazine 117 (November 1975): 721+