Important British Paintings (1500-1850)

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Lot 71
  • 71

Reverend Matthew William Peters R.A. 1741/42-1814

bidding is closed

Description

  • Reverend Matthew William Peters R.A.
  • Scene from The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act III Scene III: Mrs Page, Mrs Ford and Falstaff. Falstaff goes into the basket; They cover him with foul linen
  • oil on canvas
  • ENGRAVED: J. P. Simon

Provenance

Commissioned by Alderman John Boydell (1719-1804);
The Shakespeare Gallery Sale, 20th May 1805, Lot 43, bt. George Stainforth for 41 gns;;
Sir Francis Baring, 1st Bt., and thence by descent to Francis Baring, Lord Northbrook;
J. R. Thomas;
Anon Sale, Christies 3rd July 1964, lot 79, bt. Dent for 150 gns.;
Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico

Literature

Lady Victoria Manners, Matthew William Peters RA, His Life and Work, 1913, p. 55;
Catalogue of Pictures at Museo de Arte Ponce, Fundacion Luis A. Ferre, p. 237-8

Catalogue Note

This amusing scene from The Merry Wives of Windsor was engraved for inclusion in Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery.  John Boydell was an enterprising businessman who saw a market for history paintings by the leading painters of the age.  In the introduction to the catalogue of The Shakespeare Gallery Boydell wrote that "the object of the present design....[was to] establish an English School of Historical Painting".  Artists such as Peters, Fuseli, Northcote, and Westall were all commissioned to paint large scale canvases which were exhibited at a new gallery in Pall Mall in 1789.  The paintings were then engraved by the likes of Bartolozzi and Schiavonetti.  The project proved enormously popular and Peters contributed five works to the gallery; another scene from The Merry Wives of Windsor, two scenes from Henry VIII and a single scene from Much Ado About Nothing.