773 - Portrait of a gentleman, oil on canvas in an oval gilt-coloured frame, 2nd half 19th century

Portrait of a gentleman, oil on canvas in an oval gilt-coloured frame, 2nd half 19th century Oil on canvas, unsigned. Bust portrait of a man, turned towards the viewer, against a dark ground. The dark hair is combed back, the face framed by a short full beard with moustache. He wears a dark coat with wide lapels over a dark waistcoat, with it a white shirt with a standing collar and a black neck tie. On the reverse of the frame a handwritten pencil inscription. Age-appropriate condition, a pressure mark with small holes in the canvas and loss of paint, scratches, rubbed areas, partial craquelure. Image 75 x 61 cm (HxW), framed in an oval gilt-coloured ornamental frame with an openwork cresting of rocaille and foliage and a cartouche at the foot, frame bumped with losses particularly at the cresting, frame width 9 cm The portrait belongs together with the portrait of a lady. The clothing corresponds to the middle-class men's fashion of the mid-19th c., which deliberately presented the sitter as sober and businesslike and left the jewellery to the portrait of the lady. Portrait pairs of this kind were mostly commissioned on the occasion of a marriage or a family anniversary.