Circle of Enoch Seeman,
Polish/English 1689/90-1745-

Portrait of a gentleman, s…

Description

Circle of Enoch Seeman, Polish/English 1689/90-1745- Portrait of a gentleman, seated half-length, wearing a bronze-coloured jacket and a white shirt, in a feigned oval; oil on canvas, 72.7 x 59.6 cm. Provenance: Private Collection, UK. Note: Seeman was a prominent and prolific portraitist who, as court painter to the British royal family, depicted sitters such as George II (1683-1760) and Queen Caroline of Ansbach (1683-1737). The present work was likely painted by an artist familiar with Seeman's portraiture, and recalls works such as Seeman's 'Portrait of a Gentleman, probably the Hon. Montague Blundell', offered by Christie's, London, on 29 November 2023 (lot 131).

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Circle of Enoch Seeman, Polish/English 1689/90-1745- Portrait of a gentleman, seated half-length, wearing a bronze-coloured jacket and a white shirt, in a feigned oval; oil on canvas, 72.7 x 59.6 cm. Provenance: Private Collection, UK. Note: Seeman was a prominent and prolific portraitist who, as court painter to the British royal family, depicted sitters such as George II (1683-1760) and Queen Caroline of Ansbach (1683-1737). The present work was likely painted by an artist familiar with Seeman's portraiture, and recalls works such as Seeman's 'Portrait of a Gentleman, probably the Hon. Montague Blundell', offered by Christie's, London, on 29 November 2023 (lot 131).

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Estim. 400 - 500 GBP

BOSSE (Abraham). Collection of 2 works, bound in a small in-8 volume, glazed fawn calf, smooth spine cloisonné and decorated with gilded motifs with garnet-red title-piece, triple gilded fillet framing the covers with corner finials, filleted edges, inner gilded roulette, edges speckled with red; upper headband damaged, corners worn (binding circa 1700). One of France's most illustrious engravers, Abraham Bosse (c. 1604-1676), was the son of a German tailor who immigrated to Tours. Also a mathematician and geometer, he published personal works on geometry and the art of engraving, including several based on treatises by the architect and engineer Girard Desargues on perspective, sundials and stereotomy. Reunion of his two major books on perspective, one theoretical and the other practical. -Maniere universelle de MrDesargues, pour pratiquer la perspective par petit-pied, comme le geometral. Ensemble les places et proportions des fortes & foibles touches, teintes ou couleurs. AParis, de l'imprimerie de Pierre Des-Hayes. 1647 [on title-frontispieces] and 1648 [on printed title]. Small in-8, 352pp. as follows: 16pp. unnumbered, pp.1to168, 8pp. (with 2columns per page, numbered 169to184), pp.169to176 (counting as 185to192), pp.193to312, 8pp. unnumbered (counting as 313to320), pp.321to342, 2pp. unnumbered. First edition. Important copper-engraved illustration by Abraham Bosse. Off-text: title-frontispiece, portrait of Michel Larcher, and 81ff. of mostly double-sided plates (bearing a second frontispiece and 156 numbered stamped compositions, 2 of which are repeated). One of the plate leaves has been folded by the binder and attached to the outer margin of a text leaf. In the text, 2 vignettes: a dedication to Michel Larcher, illustrated with his coat of arms, and a numerical demonstration accompanying composition no. 156 (Abraham Bosse, savant graveur, Maxime Préaud and Sophie Join-Lambert dir., Paris, BnF, et Tours, musée des Beaux-Arts, pp.61-62, 244-251 et325; Berlin, no. 4716; Fowler, no. 56). A great scientific and artistic treatise. Using a rational Cartesian pedagogy, Abraham Bosse expounds and extends the theories of Girard Desargues: he deals with perspective applied to the drawing of figures and their shadows, then applied to variations in hue and color according to the distance of the objects represented, and adds to this theoretical complements including the treatise that Girard Desargues himself had published in 1636. He suggests the conformity of geometrical and perspectival drawing: "geometrical drawing" means drawing the orthogonal projection of an object on a horizontal or vertical plane, enabling builders or craftsmen to read dimensions and carry out fabrication or construction. To practice "le perspectif" (the leterme of "petit pied" means a reduced scale) is to draw an object seen from a certain point at a given distance, which falls within the liberal arts, and is the prerogative of the architect. By suggesting this conformity of the "geometrical" and the "perspectival", Abraham Bosse overturns traditional hierarchies and "gives the handicraftsmen their letters of nobility. If we add to this the aggregation of engraving and painting in what [he] calls the art of portraiture, there can be no doubt that he attempted an intellectual and social liberalization of the art of engraving" (Abraham Bosse, savant graveur, op.cit., p.244). This Manière universelle earned Abraham Bosse admission to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, where he was called upon to teach the practice of perspective, and was widely distributed in Europe: it was translated into Dutch, and inspired the first major English treatise on perspective, published in 1719 by the mathematician Brook Taylor. A teacher of Blaise Pascal and esteemed scholar of René Descartes, the architect and geometer Girard Desargues (1591-c. 1661) frequented Père Mersenne's circle and was a friend of Abraham Bosse. He is considered the founder of projective geometry, and one of the inventors of the geometric coordinate system (which, however, was given the less legitimate name of Descartes). He published four treatises, including one on perspective in 1636, a veritable Bible for Abraham Bosse, who was among those who did most to spread his ideas. Although overshadowed by Descartes and Pascal, Girard Desargues' work was rediscovered in the following century by Gaspard Monge, and developed in the 19th century by mathematicians Jean-Victor Poncelet and Charles-Julien Brianchon.

Estim. 2 000 - 2 500 GBP

Spanish school of ca. 1840-1850. "Gentleman. Oil on canvas. With frame of Empire period. Measurements: 91 x 71 cm; 104 x 83,5 cm (frame). In this work we see a typical nineteenth-century portrait, with the gentleman of three quarters in the foreground next to a table of rich mouldings, on which a globe is presented. The gentleman is dressed in a black suit and white shirt with a high collar, and appears to be looking directly at the viewer, although his proud attitude establishes a certain distance from us. He is notable for his carefully trimmed, bushy beard. His upright position indicates the pride the sitter feels in his profession (possibly a cartographer or geographer); the rich clothing and ostentatious interior allude to the high social position he enjoyed, certainly among the most exclusive circles of eighteenth-century Spanish society. The portrait is set against a neutral, dark background from which the figure emerges illusionistically, illuminated directly by a homogeneous light that leaves behind the excessive, chiaroscuro contrasts of light and shade of the previous century. In the 18th century, European portraiture was varied and wide-ranging, with numerous influences and largely determined by the tastes of both the clientele and the painter himself. However, this century saw the birth of a new concept of portraiture that would evolve throughout the century and unify all the national schools: the desire to capture the personality and character of the human being, beyond his external reality and social rank, in his effigy. During the previous century, portraiture had become established among the upper classes and was no longer reserved solely for the court. For this reason, as the 17th and even more so in the 18th century, the formulas of the genre became more relaxed and moved away from the ostentatious and symbolic official representations typical of the Baroque apparatus. On the other hand, the 18th century reacted against the rigid etiquette of the previous century with a more human and individual conception of life, and this was reflected in all areas, from furniture, which became smaller and more comfortable, replacing the large gilded and carved pieces of furniture, to the portrait itself, which came to dispense, as we see here, with all symbolic or scenographic elements in order to depict the individual rather than the personage.

Estim. 2 800 - 3 000 GBP

English school, ca. 1830-1840. "Portrait of a Gentleman." Oil on canvas. Relined. Measurements: 75 x 63 cm. This male portrait of bust represents a middle-aged man and aristocratic bearing. The face, natural and sober, is animated with the hint of a soft smile and has been treated with great delicacy, by means of a brushstroke that melts without leaving evident traces. The starched collar enhances the haughtiness of her features, modeled with a clear light that also brings out the right textures of the pleated blouse. Both the composition, captured in the foreground on a neutral background, and the pictorial execution of this excellent portrait fit the characteristics of the best English portrait painting of the first quarter of the 19th century.

Estim. 5 000 - 6 000 GBP

Attributed to THOMAS LAWRENCE (Bristol, 1769 - London, 1830). Portrait. Oil on canvas. Measurements: 73,5 x 63 cm; 96 x 84 cm (frame). The author offers us a portrait of great sobriety, dominated by a palette of cold tonalities, which are only qualified with the use of rounded forms that contribute delicacy to the piece as it is observed in the treatment of the handkerchief in the neck. Both the composition and the pictorial execution of this excellent portrait fit with the characteristics of the best English portrait painting of the first quarter of the 19th century, and especially with the work of Sir Thomas Lawrence and his closest circle. Sir Thomas Lawrence was, after the death of Joshua Reynolds in 1792, Britain's foremost portraitist. His early training took place in Bath, where he learned from William Hoare the technique of pastel, and from Thomas Barker the correct handling of oil paint. In 1787 he moved to London, where he exhibited his first works at the Royal Academy. He began to triumph thanks to his female portraits, such as the one of Elizabeth Farren, where we can already guess certain traits of sensitivity that he would develop in his more mature production. In 1791 he was admitted to the Royal Academy and the following year, after the death of Joshua Reynolds, he became the king's painter. In 1815 he was knighted and that same year the royal family commissioned a series of portraits for the Waterloo Chamber at Windsor Castle. In 1820 he succeeded Benjamin West as president of the Royal Academy. Lawrence's portraits were based on the "great style" of Reynolds, but the Bristol painter opened the way to a new concept of portraiture with respect to the model, his personal demeanor and his emotional portrayal. He knew how to rescue a very personal vision of his clients, typical of the romantic portrait and of the Victorian era. His models are presented in relaxed and natural attitudes, the brushstroke is delicate, imperceptible in the faces and lighter and sketched in the clothes and the landscape, which almost always has an important role.

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