Offered by Antichità Castelbarco
Jean-Baptiste van Loo (Aix-en-Provence, 1684 - 1745) entourage
Illegible signature traces in the lower right corner
Portrait of William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield (1705 – 1793)
Oil on canvas 76 x 63 cm. Framed 91 x 77 cm.
An English nobleman is immortalised in our portrait, dressed in a neat but not overly opulent manner, revealing his membership of an aristocratic or bourgeois British family of the first half of the 18th century.
The subject poses naturally as he observes the viewer, aware of his rank, in keeping with the pictorial custom of the time which, in order to express a feeling, required painters to hint at emotions without making them explicit and therefore vulgar.
There are no inscriptions revealing his precise identity, but nevertheless, based on a comparison with some prints and paintings of the period, we can match his features to William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield (1705–1793), a British judge, politician and lawyer, best known for his reforms of English law.
Considered the most prominent British jurist of the 18th century, Mansfield's decisions reflected the Enlightenment and led the country towards the abolition of slavery.
This is a type of portrait typically requested by the nobility, especially in England, between the 17th and 18th centuries, where the subject liked to be portrayed stripped of their trappings, without pompous clothes, fashionable accessories or elaborate hairstyles, in order to demonstrate that their status and value did not depend solely on the material wealth displayed with opulence.
As for the authorship, by carefully observing the fine features of the subject, we can find convincing points of contact with the French painter Jean-Baptiste van Loo (Aix-en-Provence, 1684 - 1745), who stayed in England from around 1737 to 1742, a period of great success for the painter as a portraitist, and his works from this period are considered among his most important.
Delevery information :
We take care of and organise the transport of the purchased works, both for Italy and abroad, through professional and insured carriers.
We take great care We personally take care of the packaging, to which we devote a great deal of care: each work is carefully packed, first with arti- cle material, then with a custom-made wooden box.
Should you have the desire to see this or other works in person, we would be happy to welcome you to our gallery in Riva del Garda, Viale Giuseppe Canella 18, we are always open by appointment only.
