An Unknown Man, possibly James II as Duke of York

Physical description

Portrait of a man, turned slightly to left and looking to front; the sitter is wearing a patterned lace neckcloth. Features in brown, sanguine and grey with some blue shadowing, diagonally hatched across the features and heavily impasted with coloured gouache and with white for the lights; touches of white and brownish yellow in the eyes and a white high spot on the tip of the nose; all on a pale carnation ground; hair in brown wash, heavily hatched with darker colour and with the lights in grey gouache, also over the carnation; cravat in white shaded with grey; costume in washes of brown-yellow and dark brown; background a plain dark brown wash; on vellum put down on pasteboard.

Frame: Recent twentieth-century brass (?)-gilt oval locket, the convex back bent over in a sharp arris to meet the straight sides (imitating a seventeenth-century type with closing front cover), which hold the bevelled edge of the flat glass in a bezel; the hanger of flat wire, flanked by two separate spirals in tapering flat wire of four turns.

Place of Origin

England, Great Britain (painted)

Date

ca. 1670 (painted)

Artist/maker

Gibson, Richard, born 1610 - died 1690 (artist)

Materials and Techniques

Watercolour on vellum put down on pasteboard

Marks and inscriptions

'37' and 'III'

Dimensions

Height: 76 mm, Width: 60 mm

Object history note

Provenance: Acquired from an unrecorded source by J Pierpont Morgan; sold Christie's 24 June 1935, lot 51 (as Sir Robert Walpole by Lawrence Crosse); bt Frost & Reed on behalf of Mr G H Kemp, on whose death in 1940 the miniature was sold by his executors through Frost & Reed to the Museum; bt with funds from the R H Stephenson Bequest.

Descriptive line

Portrait miniature of an unknown man, possibly James II as Duke of York, watercolour on vellum by Richard Gibson, ca.1670.

Bibliographic References (Citation, Note/Abstract, NAL no)

Murdoch, John. Seventeenth-century English Miniatures in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. London: The Stationery Office, 1997.
Cat.108, pp.194-195. Full Citation:

“108 Unknown Man, possibly James II as Duke of York
(b.1633 d.1701)
c.1670
P12-1940

Oval 76 x 60 mm

Features in brown, sanguine and grey with some blue shadowing, diagonally hatched across the features and heavily impasted with coloured gouache and with white for the lights; touches of white and brownish yellow in the eyes and a white high spot on the tip of the nose; all on a pale carnation ground; hair in brown wash, heavily hatched with darker colour and with the lights in grey gouache, also over the carnation; cravat in white shaded with grey; costume in washes of brown-yellow and dark brown; background a plain dark brown wash; on vellum put down on pasteboard.

Condition: Some marginal abrasion, otherwise very good.

Signed: Not signed. Inscribed on the back of card: 37 and III.

Frame: Recent twentieth-century brass (?)-gilt oval locket, the convex back bent over in a sharp arris to meet the straight sides (imitating a seventeenth-century type with closing front cover), which hold the bevelled edge of the flat glass in a bezel; the hanger of flat wire, flanked by two separate spirals in tapering flat wire of four turns.

Provenance: Acquired from an unrecorded source by J Pierpont Morgan; sold Christie's 24 June 1935, lot 51 (as Sir Robert Walpole by Lawrence Crosse); bt Frost & Reed on behalf of Mr G H Kemp, on whose death in 1940 the miniature was sold by his executors through Frost & Reed to the Museum; bt with funds from the R H Stephenson Bequest.

Literature: Williamson 1906-8, vol. I, no. 149, pl. LXIII; Williamson 1907 (March), p. 140, repro. no. XXXIV (' a still finer work of Lawrence Crosse representing Sir Robert Walpole'); Foster 1914-16, vol. II, p. 90, no. 92; Reynolds 1959, pl. XII, no. 20 (as 'said to be Sir Robert Walpole, c.1690, Artist Unknown'); Summary Catalogue, 1981, p. 24 (Unknown Man).

Williamson's identification of the sitter was abandoned as soon as the miniature came to the Museum. Carl Winter corresponded with C K Adams at the NPG, and Adams wrote: 'I do not think it corresponds at all with the authentic portraits of Sir Robert.' (1) Winter accordingly catalogued the miniature as 'A Young Man, artist unknown'.

Subsequently, Jonathan Mayne noticed that the miniature was a copy of a portrait identified as The Duke of York by Huysmans, which was in the possession of the Hudson's Bay Company. The status of this may be dubious - it has been mentioned neither by Piper 1963 nor by Davies 1979 - and the sitter looks younger than lames should at the apparent date of the portrait, c.1665. Whoever the sitter, the painting must surely be the source for the miniature.

Adams dated the miniature on the grounds of the hair and the cravat as 'of the seventies or eighties'. This seems too late. The evidence is not easy to interpret, but there seems little sign of the flat-topped hairstyle of the 1670s, and certainly no hint of the shortening which came in in the 1680s. The sitter wears his own hair, falling narrowly over the shoulders in long waves, as it was fashionably worn in the mid- to late 1660s. On the other hand, the neckcloth, which in the painting may be made up of a border of Milanese lace attached to a conventional long collar of the earlier 1660s, seems in the miniature to be a knotted piece of raised Venetian needle-lace, much more characteristic of the 1670s.

During the 1670s, Gibson was employed in the household of the Duke of York. On technical grounds, attribution of the miniature to him seems beyond doubt. The strong diagonalism of the modelling strokes in the flesh-painting is especially distinctive, and other technical factors, such as the painting of the hair over the carnation and the use of pasteboard as the support for the vellum, are indicative. The bright frontal lighting of the face and the use of the plain, dark brown background to heighten the impact of the sitter, are paralleled in other works of the 1670s (see, for example, Cat. No. 110 [P.5-1942]).

1, Letter of 10 March 1941, in department files.”

Materials

Watercolour; Vellum

Techniques

Painting

Subjects depicted

James (II, King of England)

Categories

Portraits; Paintings

Collection code

PDP