214 - AN ENAMEL PORTRAIT MINIATURE OF A GENTLEMAN (PURPORTED TO BE SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS), BY GERVASE SPENCER (1715-1763), DATED 1758

AN ENAMEL PORTRAIT MINIATURE OF A GENTLEMAN (PURPORTED TO BE SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS), BY GERVASE SPENCER (1715-1763), DATED 1758 with powdered hair en queue and wearing a blue coat with gold lace, the sitter perhaps an officer of the Royal Navy, the counter enamel signed 'G.S. f / 1758', 47mm oval, in later giltwood frame, with anotated loose paper backing from an earlier frame The anotation reads: Sir Joshua Reynolds, Born 16 July 1723, Painted 1758 by S.G. To John H.J. Furse, in memory of, Anne Eliz.th Price, 24 Nov 1848 Anne Elizabeth Price (née Palmer, b.1797 - died 24 November 1848), was a great-niece of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Her first cousin once removed, John Henry Furse (1774-1854) of the Halsdon Estate in Devon, had inherited the bulk of Reynolds's personal papers, letters and studio journals as well as family portraits and drawings. Perhaps the Furse family conflated this provenance and the unknown subject of this miniature, to arrive at the conclusion that it depicted Joshua Reynolds. Gervase Spencer was certainly intimately connected with Reynolds, the latter painting a portrait of Spencer in about 1753; nevertheless the sitter in this miniature seems to bear little resemblance to known depictions of Reynolds.