Style of Sir Godfrey Kneller
1646 - 1723
Portrait of William Russell, Lord Russell
Oil on canvas
Image size: 12 x 11 inches (30 x 28 cm)
In a period carved gilt frame
William Russell, Baron Russell (29 September 1639 – 21 July 1683), was an English politician. He was a leading member of the Country Party, forerunners of the Whigs, who opposed the succession of King James II during the reign of King Charles II, ultimately resulting in his execution for treason.
after HANS HOLBEIN THE YOUNGER
1497 – 1543
Portrait of William Warham
Oil on panel, transferred to canvas
Image size: 35 x 38 inches (89 x 71 cm)
Hand made contemporary style frame
Painted between the early 17th and mid 18th century. The handling of the paint in this portrait and the overall appearance of the picture suggests that the artist was a talented early seventeenth-century copyist who has faithfully replicated the earlier composition of Hans Holbein the Younger.
The level of detail suggests that the artist had access to both a pattern and the… Show Full Description original painting when producing this work.
Last of the pre-reformation archbishops of Canterbury, William Warham was born around 1450 in the Hampshire town of Malshanger. Educated at Winchester, he then went on to train as a lawyer at New College Oxford. He proved his skills as a diplomat in his role as Master of the Rolls under Henry VII and was later ordained and made Bishop of London and Keeper of the Great Seal in 1502.
In 1504 he was promoted to Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor, presiding over both the coronation of the new King Henry VIII and his marriage to Katherine of Aragon in 1509. He would later be called upon to act against his conscience and assist Cardinal Thomas Wolsey in attempting to negotiate with the papacy to arrange an annulment for Henry’s marriage to Katherine. Wishing to avoid the king’s displeasure, Warham remained compliant to the crown during the divorce proceedings and submissively accepted Henry as supreme head of the English Church in 1531, but in 1532 he felt compelled to voice his true feelings and published a protest against the Reformation.
He was perhaps saved retribution from the crown by his death by natural causes several months later. Hans Holbein’s original sketch of Warham is housed in the royal the collection at Windsor Castle and his finished portrait, after which this work was painted, currently hangs in the Louvre. Erasmus, a close friend of Warham, had sent him a portrait of himself painted by Holbein as a token of their friendship, and it was perhaps this that prompted the Archbishop to have his own likeness recorded in 1527 in a similar pose to that of his friend.
This fine copy of Holbein’s portrait of Warham was painted between the early 17th and mid 18th centuries. The work is of a high quality and the artist has accurately re-created the same look of weariness in the old man’s face and the naturalistic play of shadow across flesh in Holbein’s original. The depiction of the Archbishop’s regalia is also faithful to the highly detailed rendering in Holbein’s work and displays a great deal of skill on behalf of the copyist.
Hans Holbein (1497/8–1543) was the first great British artist, and is regarded as one of the greatest artists of all time. He moved to England from Basel in 1526–8 and then again in 1532–43, an extremely turbulent time in English history when all around were losing their heads.
Thomas Hudson
1701 – 1779
Portrait of Mrs Faber
Oil on canvas
Image size: 29 x 24 ½ inches (74 x 62.5 cm)
Original gilt frame
MRS. FABER
Mrs Faber was the wife of John Faber Jr. (circa 1695 – 1756 ) a famous Mezzotint printer and engraver of the time. Born in Amsterdam, Faber learned drawing and mezzotint engraving from his father before attending the Academy in St Martin’s Lane. Faber was highly regarded as an engraver of portraits and was prolific in his output.
A number of artists employed Faber to make prints after their work. He turned many of Thomas Hudson’s works into prints and a print version of this painting can be viewed at the National Portrait Gallery.
John Faber is best remembered for his forty-seven plates of members of the Kit-Kat Club, (after Kneller), and a series of twelve portraits entitled, "Beauties of Hampton Court".
He died in 1756 and according to Horace Walpole , Mrs. Faber remarried a lawyer by the name of Smith.
THOMAS HUDSON 1701–1779
Thomas Hudson was a celebrated 18th century portrait painter. Born in Devon in 1701 he studied under the artist Jonathan Richardson and married his daughter –against Richardson’s wishes.
He had many artistic friends including William Hogarth and Francis Hayman and travelled with them in Europe in 1748. He also visited Italy with the sculptor Louis-François Roubiliac in 1752. Hudson’s style of portraiture proved so successful that for a decade from 1745 to 1755 he was London’s most popular portrait painter and made a fortune painting the cream of London society and members of the Royal Family.
He was also a talented teacher,perhaps too good, as subsequently a number of his former assistants overtook him in popularity including the artist Joshua Reynolds .
Hudson retired in the late 1750’s and died in Twickenham in 1779.
His most notable works include portraits of King George II and George Friedrich Handel and his “Portrait of a Nobleman in Van Dyck dress.”
Many of Hudson's works may be seen in art galleries. These include the National Portrait Gallery, the National Maritime Museum, the Tate Gallery, the Foundling Museum and the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery. His works are also in Museums across the world.
LITERATURE
Ellen G. Miles, Thomas Hudson (1701–1779) Portraitist to the British Establishment, PhD thesis, Yale 1976, pub. University Microfilms International, Ann Arbor
EXHIBITIONS
Ellen G. Miles and Jacob Simon, Thomas Hudson, 1979, Kenwood House
Follower of Ambrose McEnvoy
Circa 1910
Portrait of a Lady
Oil on canvas
Image size: 20 x 16 inches (51 x 40.5 cm)
Original ebonised Frame
Circle of Gerard van Honthorst
1592 - 1656
Portrait of a Gentleman
Oil on wooden panel
Image size: 29 x 23 inches
Contemporary gilt frame
Gerard van Honthorst was a Dutch Golden Age Painter. Early in his career he visited Rome, where he had great success painting in a style influenced by Caravaggio. Following his return to the Netherlands he became a leading portrait painter.
Primitive School
Early 19th Century
Portrait of a Young Girl
Oil on canvas
Image size: 12 x 9 ½ inches
Original frame
Charming portraitof a young girl with the face being quite detailed.
Circle of Mary Beale
1633 - 1699
Portrait of a Gentleman
Oil on canvas
Image size: 30 x 25 inches
Contemporary gilt frame
Mary Beale was the daughter of a Suffolk clergyman.She married Charles Beale, an artist's colour-man, in 1652. Beale worked professionally from the mid-1650s, producing numerous portraits, particularly of her family and friends. She was a friend of Sir Peter Lely. Many details of her busy working life are recorded in the notebooks kept by her husband, Charles Beale, who acted as her studio assistant.
French School
18th Century
Portrait of a Young Man
Pastel on paper
Image size: 9.5 x 6.5 inches
Gilt frame
Gertrude Braud
British 19th Century
Portrait of Mary Braud
Watercolour on paper
Image size: 11 x 7 ¾ inches
Gilt frame
Marie Laurencin
1883 – 1956
Portrait of a Girl
Pastel, signed lower left
Image size: 18 x 15 inches
Original frame
Laurencin was born in Paris, the illegitimate daughter of Pauline Laurencin and Alfred Toulet. She did not know her father’s identity until she was 22, eight years after his death.
Laurencin studied porcelain painting at the Sèvres factory. She later entered the Académie Humbert, where she met Georges Braque and Georges Lepape.
In 1907 she exhibited at Clovis Sagot’s gallery in Montmartre. There, Pablo Picasso introduced her to Guillaume Apollinaire, with whom she would be romantically involved until 1913. Picasso and Apollinaire introduced Laurencin to the Bateau Lavoir, where she met Fernande Olivier, Max Jacob, André Salmon, Maurice Raynal, Maurice Cremnitz, Gertrude Stein, and André Derain, among others.
In 1908 Group of Artists is purchased by Gertrude Stein, Laurencin’s first sale. The painting is a group portrait of Laurencin, Apollinaire, Picasso and his mistress, Fernande Olivier. In 1913 Laurencin’s relationship with Apollinaire ended, signalling the end of her Cubist-inspired period.
During the First World War, Laurencin left France for exile in Spain with her German-born husband, Baron Otto von Waëtjen, since through her marriage she had automatically lost her French citizenship. The couple subsequently lived together briefly in Düsseldorf. After they divorced in 1920, she returned to Paris, where she achieved financial success as an artist until the economic depression of the 1930s. During the 1930s she worked as an art instructor at a private school. She lived in Paris until her death.
Julio Moises Fernandez de Villasante
1888 - 1968
Portrait of a Young Woman
Oil on canvas, signed and dated lower left
Image size: 34 x 29 inches
Gilt wooden frame
Julio Moises Fernandez de Villasante was born in 1988 in Tortosa, Spain. He studied at the School of Fine Arts in Cadiz, where he received several prizes and a commission to decorate the magnificent Grand Theatre of the city. He moved to Barcelona in 1912, whereupon he began exhibiting regularly including San Francisco (1915) and Panama (1916). He continued to exhibit all over the world for the rest of his life.
Moises founded a free Academy of Art in Madrid in 1923, which was attended by Salvador Dali. Around the same time he was commissioned to paint the portaits of a number of the Spanish royal family, most notably King Alfonso XIII and Queen Victoria Eugenia.
Moises was apponted director of the School of Fine Arts in Madrid in 1946. He died in Suances in 1968.
Philip De László
Hungarian 1869 - 1937
Portrait of a Marion Johnson
Oil on Board, signed and dated "1929 London" lower right
Image size: 29 x 24 inches (74 x 61 cm)
Original gilt frame
Provenance:
Presented by de László to the sitter.
American Private Collection.
This study portrait was painted in February 1924, during the sittings for a three-quarter length portrait of the sitter. That portrait had been commissioned by Marian Hoffman’s mother, ahead of the sitter’s marriage in November. De László regularly made these study portraits for sitters he particularly enjoyed painting and they were often completed without their knowledge.
It may have been intended as his wedding gift to the sitter. Both portraits were shown in the artist’s solo exhibition at the French Gallery, London in June 1924 and the gallery arranged for the shipment of the picture to the sitter’s home in America after the exhibition.1 A preparatory drawing for the three-quarter length is listed in the Studio Inventory but is currently untraced.
Marian Krumbhaar Hoffman was born 15 December 1901 in New York, daughter of Charles Frederick Hoffman and Zelia Krumbhaar Preston. Her father was President of the Union Club, Treasurer of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and a Trustee of Columbia University, and lived in Newport, Rhode Island, where he owned Armsea Hall.
After the death of her father in 1919 she inherited the sum of $50,000 a year until she reached the age of twenty one, when she received his $5 million estate. On 29 November 1924, she married Aymar Johnson. The sitter was presented at the Court of St. James’s in London on 26 June 1929. Her daughter Zelia was born in London on 20 September 1929, just five days after the death of her grandmother. The sitter and her husband continued to live at Armsea.
A number of de László’s sitters lived in the surrounding area including Gladys Vanderbilt, Mrs Robert Strawbridge, née Berwind and Anita Strawbridge. Aymar Johnson was a lieutenant commander in the Naval reserve during the Second World War but fell ill while en route to resume his duties in Bermuda and died in 1942. The sitter died 5 June 1981.
To be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of portraits by the artist currently being compiled by the Hon. Mrs de László.
Exhibited: - The French Gallery, London, A Series of Portraits and Studies by Philip A. de László, M.V.O., June, 1924, no. 28 or 50.
Literature: - DLA107-0220, letter from the French Gallery to de László, 5 November 1924. Sitters’ Book II, f. 39: Marian K. Hoffman 18 Feb. 24.
Style of Sir Godfrey Kneller
after HANS HOLBEIN THE YOUNGER
THOMAS HUDSON
Follower of AMBROSE McENVOY
Portrait of a Gentleman
Primitive School
Mary Beale
Portrait of a Young Man
Gertrude Braud
Marie Laurencin
Julio Moises Fernandez de Villasante
Philip De László
