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).
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).