Sunday, May 31, 2020

Painted Portraits of British Writers

Meredith Frampton
Portrait of Sir Charles Grant Robertson
1941
oil on canvas
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

Alberto de Rohden
Portrait of Sir Peter Le Page Renouf
ca. 1890
oil on canvas
Guernsey Museum and Art Gallery

William Bell Scott
Portrait of Algernon Charles Swinburne
1860
oil on canvas
Balliol College, University of Oxford

Richard Rothwell
Portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
ca. 1840-43
oil on panel
Bodleian Library, University of Oxford

Thomas Lawrence
Portrait of Richard Payne Knight
1794
oil on canvas
Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester

Tilly Kettle
Portrait of Anna Seward (the Swan of Lichfield)
1762
oil on canvas
National Portrait Gallery, London

On the fleet streams the Sun, that late arose,
     In amber radiance plays, the tall young grass
     No foot hath bruised; clear morning, as I pass,
     Breathes the pure gale that on the blossom blows,
And, as with gold yon green hill's summit glows,
     The lake inlays the vale with molten glass.
     Now is the year's soft youth, yet me, alas,
     Cheers not as it was wont; impending woes
Weigh on my heart; the joys that once were mine
     Spring leads not back, and those that yet remain
     Fade while she blooms. Each hour more lovely shine
Her crystal beams, and feed her floral train,
     But ah with pale and waning fires decline
     Those eyes whose light my filial hopes sustain.

– Anna Seward (1799)

Godfrey Kneller
Portrait of John Dryden
1697
oil on canvas
Trinity College, University of Cambridge

John Michael Wright
Portrait of Thomas Hobbes
ca. 1669-70
oil on canvas
National Portrait Gallery, London

attributed to Pieter Borsseler
Portrait of Samuel Butler
ca. 1665
oil on canvas
National Portrait Gallery, London

William Sheppard
Portrait of Thomas Killigrew
1650
oil on canvas
National Portrait Gallery, London

William Dobson
Portrait of Two Court Poets, John Taylor and John Denham
1643
oil on canvas
Courtauld Gallery, London

John de Critz the Elder
Posthumous Portrait of Sir Philip Sidney
ca. 1620
oil on panel
Bolton Museum and Art Gallery, Manchester

John Vanderbank
Portrait of Francis Bacon
ca. 1731
(after anonymous original of ca. 1618)
oil on canvas
National Portrait Gallery, London

Anonymous British Artist
The Cobbe Portrait of William Shakespeare
ca. 1610
oil on panel
National Trust, Hatchlands, Surrey

George Romney
The Infant Shakespeare attended by Nature and the Passions
ca. 1785
oil on panel
Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon

Saturday, May 30, 2020

Painted Portraits of Painters and Sculptors

Charles de La Fosse
Portrait of Jacques Rousseau (painter)
ca. 1690
oil on canvas
Maidstone Museum, Kent

Daniel Gardner
Portrait of Angelica Kauffmann (painter)
ca. 1773
oil on canvas
Government Art Collection, London

George Hayter
Portrait of Antonio Canova (sculptor)
1817
oil on canvas
Government Art Collection, London

James Lonsdale
Portrait of Joseph Nollekens (sculptor)
ca. 1818
oil on canvas
National Portrait Gallery, London

Andrew Geddes
Portrait of John Gibson (sculptor)
1830
oil on canvas
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Tenuous and Precarious

Tenuous and Precarious
Were my guardians,
Precarious and Tenuous,
Two Romans.

My father was Hazardous,
Hazardous,
Dear old man,
Three Romans.

There was my brother Spurious,
Spurious Posthumous,
Spurious was spurious
Was four Romans.

My husband was Perfidious,
He was perfidious,
Five Romans.

Surreptitious, our son,
Was surreptitious,
He was six Romans.

Our cat Tedious
Still lives,
Count not Tedious
Yet.

My name is Finis,
Finis, Finis,
I am Finis,
Six, five, four, three, two,
One Roman,
Finis.

– Stevie Smith (ca. 1966)

Henry Stanier
Imaginary Portrait of Benvenuto Cellini (sculptor)
1855
oil on panel
York City Art Gallery

Benes Knüpfer
Portrait of Arthur Wasse (painter)
ca. 1875-80
oil on canvas
Manchester Art Gallery

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Portrait of Émile Bernard (painter)
1885
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Harold Gilman
Portrait of Spencer Gore (painter)
ca. 1906-1907
oil on canvas
Leeds Art Gallery, Yorkshire
 
Harold Speed
Portrait of Lady Diana Bridgeman (painter)
ca. 1938
oil on canvas
Leamington Spa Art Gallery and Museum, Warwickshire

Rodrigo Moynihan
Portrait of Victor Pasmore (painter)
1939
oil on canvas
Royal College of Art, London

David McClure
Portrait of Hamish Reid (painter)
1952
oil on canvas
Edinburgh College of Art

Duncan Grant
Portrait of Vanessa Bell (painter)
ca. 1959
oil on canvas
Royal West of England Academy, Bristol

Elizabeth Scott-Moore
Portrait of Alfred Hayward (painter)
ca. 1959-60
oil on canvas
Brighton and Hove Museums and Art Galleries

Sylvia Sleigh
The Situation Group
1961
oil on linen
National Portrait Gallery, London

Friday, May 29, 2020

Painted Portraits of Stage Performers

attributed to Jean-Honoré Fragonard after Domenico Fetti
Portrait of actor Tristano Martinelli
ca. 1760
oil on canvas
Manchester Art Gallery

attributed to William Hamilton
Portrait Study of Mrs. Siddons
ca. 1784
oil on canvas
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

attributed to Richard Cosway
Mrs. Siddons reading in a Grotto
ca. 1810
oil on canvas
Scarborough Art Gallery, Yorkshire

Anonymous British Artist
John Philip Kemble as Vicentio in Measure for Measure
ca. 1794
oil on canvas
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

William Beechey
Portrait of John Philip Kemble
1798-99
oil on canvas
Dulwich Picture Gallery, London

anonymous copyist after Thomas Lawrence
John Philip Kemble as Rolla
in Pizarro by Richard Brinsley Sheridan

1800
oil on canvas
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

"My brave associates – partners of my toil, my feelings and my fame! – can Rolla's words add vigour to the virtuous energies which inspire your hearts? – No –YOU have judged as I have, the foulness of the crafty plea by which these bold invaders would delude you – Your generous spirit has compared as mine has, the motives, which, in a war like this, can animate their minds, and ours. – THEY by a strange frenzy driven, fight for power, for plunder, and our homes. – THEY follow an adventurer whom they fear – and obey a power which they hate – WE serve a monarch whom we love – a God whom we adore. – Wherever they move in anger, desolation tracks their progress! – Wherever they pause in amity, affliction mourns their friendship! – They boast, they come but to improve our state, enlarge our thoughts, and free us from the yoke of error! – Yes – THEY will give enlightened freedom to our minds, who are themselves the slaves of passion, avarice and pride – They offer us their protection – Yes, such protection as vultures give to lambs – covering and devouring them! – They call on us to barter all of good we have inherited and proved, for the desperate chance of something better which they promise. – Be our plain answer this: The throne WE honour is the PEOPLE'S CHOICE – the laws we reverence are our brave fathers' legacy – the faith we follow teaches us to live in bonds of charity with all mankind, and die with hope of bliss beyond the grave. Tell your invaders this, and tell them too, we seek no change; and, least of all, such change as they would bring us."

Pizarro, or, The Spaniards in Peru: A Tragedy in Five Acts (Act II, scene 2) by Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1799), adapted from Die Spanier in Peru by August von Kotzebue (1796)

Gilbert Stuart
Portrait of John Philip Kemble
ca. 1785
oil on canvas
National Portrait Gallery, London

François Bouchot
Portrait of opera singer Giulia Grisi
1840
oil on canvas
Royal Academy of Music, London

John Partridge
Portrait of opera singer Gaetano Crivelli
ca. 1825
oil on canvas
Royal Society of Musicians of Great Britain, London

attributed to Henry Fuseli
Harriet Mellon as Mistress Page in The Merry Wives of Windsor
ca. 1795
oil on canvas
Burton Gallery, University of Leeds

Thomas Gainsborough
Portrait of dancer Giovanna Baccelli
ca. 1782
oil on canvas
Tate Britain

William Nicholson
Miss Wish Wynne as Janet Cannot
in The Great Adventure by Arnold Bennett

1913
oil on canvas
Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery

Nina Hamnett
Portrait of dancer Rupert Doone
1922-23
oil on canvas
Doncaster Museum and Art Gallery, Yorkshire

Hugh Goldwin Rivière
Three Impressions of singer Jean Sterling Mackinlay
1912
oil on canvas
Royal Academy of Music, London

Philip Harris
Portrait of dancer Anthony Dowell
1995
oil on canvas
National Portrait Gallery, London

Thursday, May 28, 2020

Painted Illustrations for Literary Texts

Laurent de La Hyre
Panthea protected by Cyrus from Araspas
(from the Cyropaedia of Xenophon)
ca. 1631-34
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Anonymous British Artist
The Elopement
(from Clarissa by Samuel Richardson)
ca. 1785
oil on canvas
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Francesco Guardi
Sophronia imploring the Saracen King Aladine
to release the Christian Prisoners

(from Gerusalemme Liberata by Torquato Tasso)
before 1793
oil on canvas
Ferens Art Gallery, Kingston-upon-Hull

Charles Robert Leslie
Uncle Toby with the Widow Wadman
(from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne)
1829-30
oil on canvas
Tate Britain, London

Charles West Cope
Il Penseroso
(from Il Penseroso by John Milton)
1848
oil on panel
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

James Sant
The Bride of Abydos
(from The Bride of Abydos by George Gordon, Lord Byron)
ca, 1850
oil on canvas
Government Art Collection, London

from  The Bride of Abydos

Who hath not proved how feebly words essay
To fix one spark of Beauty's heavenly ray?
Who doth not feel, until his failing sight
Faints into dimness with its own delight,
His changing cheek, his sinking heart confess
The might, the majesty of Loveliness?
Such was Zuleika, such around her shone
The nameless charms unmarked by her alone:
The light of love, the purity of grace,
The mind, the music breathing from her face,
The heart whose softness harmonized the whole –
And, oh! that eye was in itself a soul!

– George Gordon, Lord Byron (1814)

William Bell Scott
Una and the Lion
(from The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser)
ca. 1860
oil on canvas
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Emma Sandys
Elaine
(from The Idylls of the King by Alfred, Lord Tennyson)
ca. 1862-65
oil on panel
National Trust, Wightwick Manor, Wolverhampton

Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante's Dream
(from La Vita Nuova by Dante Alighieri)
ca. 1869-72
oil on canvas
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Edward Burne-Jones
Laus Veneris
(from Laus Veneris by Algernon Charles Swinburne)
1873-75
oil on canvas
Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne

William Maw Egley
Florence Dombey in Captain Cuttle's Parlour
(from Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens)
1888
oil on canvas
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

John Collier
Hetty Sorrel
(from Adam Bede by George Eliot)
ca. 1890
oil on canvas
Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery, Lancashire

William Robert Symonds
The Princess and the Frog
(from The Frog Prince by the Brothers Grimm)
1894
oil on canvas
Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford, Yorkshire

John Duncan
Fand and Manannan
(from the Irish ballad, The Sickbed of Cúchulainn)
ca. 1913
oil on canvas
McLean Museum and Art Gallery, Greenock, Inverclyde, Scotland

Maurice Greiffenhagen
Cophetua
(from the English ballad, The King and the Beggar-Maid)
ca. 1920-25
oil on canvas
Glasgow Museums