Richard Wilson, R.A.

Mr Richard Imrie, Herne Hill, London;
By whom anonymously sold, London, Christie's, 26 January 1968, lot 109 (as Ramsay, Portrait of Allan Ramsay), where purchased by the present owners.

M. Postle and R. Simon, Richard Wilson and the Transformation of European Landscape Painting, exh. cat., London and New Haven 2014, p. 332, reproduced in black and white fig. 163.

In overall very good condition. The canvas is relined, the paint surface is clean and the varnish is clear and even. There is a fine network of craquelure which runs throughout the painting, and has been retouched in the sitters' hands. Inspection under ultraviolet light is impeded by the milky varnish, which fluoresces opaque, but it is possible to see a handful of pinprick retouchings in the sitter's face, small retouchings scattered in the background and lower left corner, and some strengthening around his proper left shoulder and in the background around the knuckles of his right hand. Offered in a carved and gilt wood frame in very good condition.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

We are grateful to Dr. Paul Spencer-Longhurst and Kate Lowry for endorsing the attribution to Richard Wilson upon first-hand inspection. Wilson's self-portrait is to be included in Richard Wilson Online, the online catalogue raisonné of the artist's works by Paul Spencer-Longhurst, with Kate Lowry and David Solkin.

Today Richard Wilson is remembered as the leading English classical landscape painter of his time, and a founding member of the Royal Academy. However, he began his career as a portraitist in the studio Thomas Wright (fl. 1728–37), himself a portrait painter in Covent Garden, London. From 1735 Wilson is recorded as painting portraits independently, and it is during this period immediately following his departure from Wright's studio that it is likely Wilson painted this, his first and only known autograph self-portrait. Wilson would have been around 21 years of age, and in the process of setting up his own practice in London. Other known portraits by Wilson from these early years of his career are the Portrait of Miss Catherine Jones of Colomendy (a cousin of Wilson) in the collection of the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth, dated by Spencer-Longhurst to around 1730,¹ and a Portrait of the Revd. Hugh Jones, the location of which is unknown but is recorded as inscribed with the date 1734.²

Portraits of Wilson are extremely rare and the only secure individual one hitherto documented is that by Anton Raphael Mengs, painted in 1752 in Rome, when Wilson was 39 years old.³ The face in that portrait shows affinities with this more recently discovered earlier work and the manner in which the sitter holds his brushes and palette is close to the Mengs portrait (in reverse), though viewed from a different angle. One self-portrait is recorded as having been in the collection of Colonel Brian Davies-Cooke who exhibited it at Wrexham in 1876;⁴ its location since is unrecorded. The Davies-Cooke family of Owstan Hall had a house near Colomendy, Flintshire, where Wilson died at the home of his cousin Catherine Jones. The Davies-Cooke family were at one time also in possession of the early portrait of her by Wilson. However, it is not yet possible to be sure that the present work is the Davies-Cooke self-portrait.

1. Richard Wilson Online no. P216.
2. Richard Wilson Online no. P2.
3. National Museum, Wales, Cardiff; see M. Postle and R. Simon 2014, reproduced p. 2, fig. 1.
4. See A. Graves, A Century of Loan Exhibitions 1813-1912, London 1914, vol. IV; the self-portrait was exhibited in the Wrexham exhibition as no. 409.