ASCRIBED TO POMPEO GIROLAMO BATONI (ITALIAN, 1708-1787)
Prospective purchasers are advised that several co… Read more
ASCRIBED TO POMPEO GIROLAMO BATONI (ITALIAN, 1708-1787)

Details
ASCRIBED TO POMPEO GIROLAMO BATONI (ITALIAN, 1708-1787)
A gentleman, formerly called Sir Horace Walpole 4th Earl of Orford (1813-1894), in blue coat trimmed with fur, white shirt and frilled cravat, brown hair dressed en queue
on ivory
oval, 2.5/8 in. (65 mm.) high, gilt-metal frame with beaded border
inscribed in pencil on the backing card, 'Painted by / Pompeo Batoni / of Rome'
Provenance
Bonhams, London, 21 March 1995, lot 21 (as Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford by Pompeo Batoni).
Special Notice
Prospective purchasers are advised that several countries prohibit the importation of property containing materials from endangered species, including but not limited to coral, ivory and tortoiseshell. Accordingly, prospective purchasers should familiarize themselves with relevant customs regulations prior to bidding if they intend to import this lot into another country.

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Katharine Cooke
Katharine Cooke

Lot Essay

A small number of portrait miniatures by Pompeo Batoni are known: one is in the National Trust's Collection at The Vyne, Hampshire and depicts the architect John Chute (1706-1776) holding a pair of spectacles. Another is of John Brudenell, Lord Montagu of Boughton, later Marquess of Monthermer (1735-1770), (see S. Lloyd, exhibition catalogue Portrait Minaitures from the Collection of the Duke of Buccleuch, Edinburgh, 1996, p. 94, no. 68, illustrated) and compares with a large-scale oil on canvas portrait of the same sitter, also by Batoni, of 1758 (see E. P. Bowron and P. B. Kerber, exhibition catalogue Pompeo Batoni. Prince of Painters in Eighteenth-Century Rome, Houston and London, 2008, p. 58, illustrated in colour). Both works are in the Collection of the Duke of Buccleuch. A further miniature by Batoni of Richard Milles (c. 1735-1820) of circa 1758 is in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (see E. P. Bowron and P. B. Kerber, op. cit, p. 166, illustrated in colour).
The present sitter bears a resemblance to Charles Crowle who was a member of the Society of Dilettanti. A portrait of him by Pompeo Batoni painted in 1761/1762 is now in the Louvre (inv. No. R.F. 1981-37).

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