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Attributed to Joseph Highmore, (1692-1780), Portrait of a lady, half-length, wearing a cream silk dr

Currency:GBP Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:2,000.00 - 3,000.00 GBP
Attributed to Joseph Highmore, (1692-1780), Portrait of a lady, half-length, wearing a cream silk dr
Attributed to Joseph Highmore, (1692-1780),
Portrait of a lady, half-length, wearing a cream silk dress, the bodice wound with pearls, painted within an oval,
oil on canvas,
76 x 63 cm
in an 18th century gilded composition frame with shell moldings at the four corners
Joseph Highmore, a portrait painter who first worked in the city, established himself in Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1724. He was influenced by Mercier, Hogarth, van Loo, Ramsay and Reynolds. Writing in the early 1730s, George Vertu commented on Highmore's style: 'Mr Highmore paints much, & the faces often at one sitting as much finist. as he can - never touches any more. this draws into a Natural was a good likeness but. not so gracefull nor pictoresk. hands all from the life which terminates in a hard. & smaller manner than the life' The Walpole Society, XXII (Vertue III p.54). The device of the pearls wound around the sitters' midriff appears in many other portraits by Highmore, but as well as being an artistic feature, corresponds to the employment of pearls as the attribute of Margaret of Antioch, the patron saint of childbirth. This portrait may have been one of a pair of marriage portraits, and is similar in composition to a Portrait of Anne, Viscountess Irwin, originally attributed to Willam Hogarth, but re-attributed to Highmore in 1952 (see Boxes 1147 and 1100, Witt Library, Somerset House).
(see illustration)
£2,000-3,000