Portrait of a gentleman, bust-length, in a plum coloured jacket and pink waistcoat

Name: POMPEO BATONI (LUCCA 1708-1787 ROME)
Brand: Portrait of a gentleman, bust-length, in a plum coloured jacket and pink waistcoat
Price: 45000.00 GBP
Availability: SoldOut

Price Realised GBP 56,250

Estimate

GBP 50,000 - GBP 70,000

Closed: 17 Dec 2020

Loading details

Try our

POMPEO BATONI (LUCCA 1708-1787 ROME)

Portrait of a gentleman, bust-length, in a plum coloured jacket and pink waistcoat

Price Realised GBP 56,250

Closed: 17 Dec 2020

Price Realised GBP 56,250

Closed: 17 Dec 2020

Details Lot Essay Related Articles More from

POMPEO BATONI (LUCCA 1708-1787 ROME)
Portrait of a gentleman, bust-length, in a plum coloured jacket and pink waistcoat
indistinctly signed and dated 'Pompeo Batoni, Roma / 177[?]' (center, on the lapel of the coat)
oil on canvas, oval
26 x 20¹⁄₂ in. (66 x 52.1 cm.)

with Thomas Lumley, London; Christie's, London, 22 November 1963, lot 118, as 'G. Stuart', sold for 114 gns. to the following,
with David Barclay, London.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, London, 3 March 1965, lot 44, when acquired by the following,
Anonymous sale [The Property of a Gentleman]; Sotheby's, London, 30 January 1985, where incorrectly attributed to Angelica Kauffmann and withdrawn following correct identification of the artist, and reoffered at the following,
Anonymous sale [The Property of a Gentleman]; Sotheby's, London, 3 April 1985, lot 17, where acquired by,
Dr. Gustav Rau (1922-2002), by whom bequeathed to UNICEF, Germany with his art collection and offered at the following,
Rau UNICEF Sale; Bonhams, London, 5 December 2013, lot 76.
Anonymous sale; Kunsthaus Lempertz, Cologne, 16 May 2015, lot 1143.

A.M. Clark and E. Peters Bowron, Pompeo Batoni: A Complete Catalogue of his Works, New York, 1985, p. 347, no. 412, pl. 372.
E. Peters Bowron, Pompeo Batoni : A Complete Catalogue of his Paintings, New Haven and London, 2016, II, p. 547, no. 427.

Remagen, Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck, Kunstkammer Rau: Tiepolo und das Antlitz Italiens, 7 July 2009-17 January 2010, no. 34.

Conditions of Sale
FAQs
This lot is offered by Christie Manson & Woods Ltd

Brought to you by

Maja MarkovicDirector, Head of Evening Sale

A Christie's specialist may contact you to discuss this lot or to notify you if the condition changes prior to the sale.

OnlineUK@christies.com +44 (0)20 7839 9060

Lot Essay

This elegantly painted oval portrait exemplifies the basis for Pompeo Batoni’s reputation as the most sought-after portraitist working in Rome during the eighteenth century.
From the later seventeenth century, there was an increasing expectation that wealthy young men from Britain and Ireland, after they had reached manhood, would spend prolonged periods on the Continent, particularly in Italy, studying the rich heritage and artefacts of Classical Antiquity and the Renaissance. By the mid-eighteenth century, this custom became an even more widespread phenomenon, with the wealthy British elite travelling in their hundreds to the great cultural sites of the Italian peninsula. Initially working as a history painter, from the 1750s onwards Batoni capitalised on the influx of British travellers, perfecting the genre of the ‘Grand Tour portrait’.
Batoni was evidently a shrewd businessman and maintained a relatively level pricing structure for his commissions, consistently less than the amounts demanded from society portraitists working in Britain, like Sir Joshua Reynolds or Allan Ramsay. In 1774, John Thorpe (1726-1792), an English ex-Jesuit living in Rome, wrote that Batoni ‘values himself for making a striking likeness of everyone he paints (E. Peters Bowron, , exhibition catalogue, London and Houston, 2008, p. 37). While this was certainly valued by his patrons, Batoni’s portraits were more than simply accurately rendered, as Thorpe went on to say, they were ‘vivid and memorable’, imbued with character and expression (., p. 38).
The painter’s ability to accommodate the changing fashions his sitter’s dress was also an important element of his success. Travelling on the Continent, wealthy Tourists were able to indulge their tastes for refinement, with Italian fashions providing a far greater array of colours and ornament than native English clothing, generally at a much lower cost. The present sitter’s double-breasted coat with the large collar suggest that the painting likely dates to the end of the 1770s, when the fashion for broader lapels became more prevalent. Beneath the sober colour of his coat, the sitter wears a brilliant pink waistcoat of figured silk.