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| Jonathan Richardson Senior Portrait of the artist's son Jonathan Richardson Junior in his study ca. 1734 oil on canvas Tate Britain |
"Richardson was Britain's leading native-born artist of his generation and one of an elite group of portrait painters. He was also the most important English art theorist of the early 18th century. This painting depicts his eldest son, who shared many of his father's cultural interests but was raised a gentleman, not a professional artist. He is shown in his study reading Greek philosophy, an antique bust of Homer placed nearby. On the wall hangs a self-portrait by his father and a portrait of his mother who had died in 1726 (hence the divine rays)."
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| William Hogarth Portrait of Mrs Salter 1741 oil on canvas Tate Britain |
"Elizabeth Salter (maiden name Secker) was born in Grantham, Lincolnshire, where she was baptised on 22 February 1720. On 2 November 1744 she married the Reverend Samuel Salter, Rector of Burton Coggles, Lincolnshire, and Prebendary of Norwich Cathedral. The couple continued to live in Lincolnshire for some years where their two eldest children were born. In 1756 Dr. Salter was appointed Rector of St. Bartholomew's near the Royal Exchange, in the city of London. By then he was also connected to the Charterhouse Pensioners' Hospital, where he was appointed Master in 1761. In order to accommodate Dr. Salter and his wife, the Governors changed the regulations to allow a married man to occupy the post, thus enabling Mrs. Salter to become the first female resident of the Charterhouse since its foundation in 1611. Mrs. Salter continued to live at the Charterhouse with her husband until his death in May 1778. What happened to her thereafter is unknown."
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| William Hogarth Portrait of James Quin, Actor ca. 1739 oil on canvas Tate Britain |
"This picture, one of Hogarth's most successful bust-length male portraits, depicts the actor James Quin (1693-1766). Quin's pose is deliberately theatrical, his head turned to the right, his eyes raised upwards as if in search of divine inspiration. The figure is framed within a feigned, carved stone roundel. Quin's expressive countenance is accentuated by the inventive way in which Hogarth has painted his long wig, the right side cascading down his coat, while the left is swept back behind the shoulder. Indeed, the whole ensemble reveals a conscious debt to the conventions of the Baroque. "The full-bottom wig, like the lion's mane, hath something noble in it," wrote Hogarth, "but were it to be worn as large again it would become a burlesque." Quin's clothing too proclaims his sense of importance, his fine ruffles of Flemish lace and his brown velvet coat heavily trimmed with elaborate gold 'frogging'. The whole portrait has an air of archaic splendour, befitting one who was, by the late 1730s, the mainstay of an increasingly outmoded and bombastic school of acting."
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| Joseph Highmore Equestrian portrait of George II ca. 1743-45 oil on canvas Tate Britain |
"Although highly finished, Highmore may nevertheless have painted this small equestrian portrait of George II (1683-1760) as a preliminary design for a life-size portrait that remained unexecuted. The composition is clearly influenced by the celebrated life-size equestrian portrait of Charles I painted by Sir Anthony van Dyck in 1633, which was in turn based upon the 1548 portrait of the emperor Charles V by Titian."
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| Joshua Reynolds Portrait of Lady Anstruther 1761 oil on canvas Tate Britain |
"Sir John Anstruther commissioned this portrait of his wife, Janet, along with his own portrait. Lady Anstruther, the daughter of a Scottish merchant, was renowned for her beauty and for her reputation as a flirt. Despite her social elevation through marriage to a baronet, on at least one occasion Lady Anstruther was taunted in the streets for her supposed gypsy descent. In Reynolds's portrait, she glides serenely through the grounds of a landed estate, her dress and deportment asserting her right to be recognized among the ranks of the aristocracy."
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| Joshua Reynolds Portrait of Francis Beckford 1755-56 oil on canvas Tate Britain |
"In this portrait Francis Beckford is dressed in a smart blue velvet coat, with matching cloth-covered buttons. His pose is derived from a half-length portrait of Queen Henrietta Maria painted in 1632 by Sir Anthony van Dyck. The adaptation of a traditionally feminine attitude to a male portrait, although unusual, was a quite deliberate ploy, especially since in the pendant portrait of Beckford's wife, Reynolds has adapted a pose from a male Van Dyck portrait. Whether either of the sitters was aware of this unusual reversal is unknown."
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| Francis Cotes Portrait of Paul Sandby 1761 oil on canvas Tate Britain |
"This portrait is an example of the more romantic image of the artist that emerged in the later eighteenth century. Sensibility stressed an emotional sensitivity to nature; in tune with these ideas the landscape painter Paul Sandby is shown in a relaxed attitude, sketching a view beyond the open window. His emotional involvement with the scene he is drawing is emphasised by his gaze and the fact that he is almost leaning out of the window. A more traditional artist's portrait would show the painter self-consciously presenting himself to the viewer."
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| Tilly Kettle Portrait of Mrs Yates as Mandane in The Orphan of China ca. 1765 oil on canvas Tate Britain |
"This full-length, life-size portrait shows the acclaimed actor Mary Ann Yates (1728-1787) as the character of Mandane in Arthur Murphy's tragedy, The Orphan of China, first performed at David Garrick's Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London in 1759. The play is based on the radical French philosopher Voltaire's L'Orphelin de Chine (1755). It is set in medieval times, with China under the cruel rule of the Tartar leader Timkurkan. The complex plot sees a high-ranking official, Zamti, and his wife Mandane wrangle with the excruciating moral dilemma of whether to sacrifice their son in the cause of national independence."
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| Tilly Kettle Portrait of a young man in a fawn coat ca. 1772-73 oil on canvas Tate Britain |
"The era of Sensibility saw some important changes in male costume. The bright colours and ostentatious decoration sometimes favoured in earlier years were now seen as being rather suspect, indicating a luxurious or effeminate character. The 'man of feeling' would, by contrast, dress unostentatiously, in plain colours. A certain disregard for personal appearance was considered a sign of being preoccupied with better thoughts. The intense gaze which the painter has given to the unknown man in this portrait enhances this impression."
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| Benjamin West Portrait of Mrs Worrell as Hebe ca. 1775-78 oil on canvas Tate Britain |
"With reference to the use of the figure in the portrait practice of West's contemporary, Sir Joshua Reynolds, the art historian Nicholas Penny has noted that the mythological character of Hebe "seems to have done nothing improper," in contrast with many of the goddesses and nymphs of ancient literature, "so ladies were content to be associated with her, and their husband and fathers were doubtless gratified by the theme of gracious and decorous service to male needs." Most pertinent was the example of the Sibyls by the seventeenth-century Bolognese artist Guercino, featuring isolated female figures, seated calmly and dressed in fulsome draperies whose broad folds and artful arrangement evoke classical sculptural forms."
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| Joseph Wright of Derby Portrait of Sir Brooke Boothby 1781 oil on canvas Tate Britain |
"Boothby's pose looks back to the melancholy tradition in Elizabethan portraiture: he lies full-length on the ground, propping his head on his right hand, in a setting of trees which obscure the light. The implication is not that he is in a state of depression, but that his mind is distracted by more elevated concerns than the humdrum preoccupations of this world. His unbuttoned waistcoat and sleeves give him a deliberately dishevelled appearance, and yet Wright has dressed him in the double-breasted frock coat, wide-brimmed hat and plain muslin cravat then in fashion."
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| Johan Zoffany Portrait of Mrs Woodhull ca. 1770 oil on canvas Tate Britain |
"One of the flowers in the basket the sitter holds is a passion flower, passiflora caerulea. Although a specimen of this hothouse plant had been introduced to Britain in 1699, it was still rare in private gardens. Zoffany often followed German convention by including in his portraits one or more objects of significance to the sitter. The inclusion of this unusual plant suggests that the Woodhulls were keen gardeners."
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| George Romney Portrait of Emma Hart as Circe ca. 1782 oil on canvas Tate Britain |
"This unfinished, life-size sketch in oil paint represents the seventeen-year-old Emma Hart (1765-1815) in the character of the sorceress Circe from Greek mythology. She stares directly outwards, her face tilted slightly downwards and her mouth opened a little in a pronounced pout. The painting was among the first of Romney's numerous portraits of Emma Hart painted over the succeeding nine years, which often represent her as characters from myth and literature. These have become the works for which Romney is best known, as Emma Hart's complex and extremely public love life (most famously her later romance with Admiral Nelson while married to the aged Sir William Hamilton) has been mythologised by numerous biographies and historical studies."
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| Robert Fagan Portrait of Anna Maria Ferri, the artist's first wife ca. 1790-92 oil on canvas Tate Britain |
"Robert Fagan was born in London in 1761, the son of a prosperous Irish baker. In March 1781, aged twenty, Fagan enrolled as a student at the Royal Academy Schools. Using his inheritance, he left England for the continent, traveling to Italy and France before settling in Rome in 1784. Although he worked as a portrait painter, Fagan was also active in art dealing, archaeology and diplomacy. Habitually dissolute and spendthrift, Fagan married Anna Maria Ferri, the daughter of an employee of a Roman cardinal, at a time when he was, according to one fellow artist, "very extravagant & embarrassed in his circumstances." After their marriage Fagan and his wife set up home in the Via Babuino, Rome, where their daughter, Esther Maria, or Estina, was born in November 1792. However, the marriage was evidently unhappy and Fagan himself was renowned in Rome for his ill-mannered behaviour. . . . Anna Maria Ferri's daughter, Estina, who in August 1809 married William Baker, heir to the estate of Bayfordbury, Hertfordshire, inherited the present portrait [after her father's suicide in 1816]. The portrait remained in the possession of their descendants until it was sold at auction in 1947."
– all quoted passages based on notes by curators at the Tate in London