Oil painting George Vertue

Object number

LDSAL314

Artist/Designer/Maker

Gibson, Thomas - Artist

Production date

Early 18th century
1715-23

Material

oil paint
canvas (paint canvas)

Technique

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

Height: 735mm
Width: 508mm

Location

Burlington House - (on display)

Object history note

PROVENANCE: the painting was probably in Gibson’s collection until about 1732, when his long illness ‘reduced him in such circumstances as to sell his small collection of pictures amongst friends’. Vertue may have bought it then from the artist, it remaining with him and his widow, Margaret, until she presented it to the Society in 1773. She suggested the Society should select any picture they liked from her possessions, and Dr Andrew Ducarel chose Gibson’s portrait of her husband. It appears in a fire insurance inventory in a list of paintings inserted into the Society’s Council Minutes after 1770.

Content description

Vertue is depicted head and shoulders, seated to the right in informal clothes, wearing a coat, white shirt and neckcloth, and reddish-brown velvet hat. He has dark brown eyes, grey hair, and is clean-shaven. He holds a porte-crayon containing white chalk, pointing to a copper plate on an engraver’s cushion. An indistinct chalk image appears on the plate of the head and shoulders of a bearded man wearing a ruff, robe and chain of office. The chalk image depicted on the copper plate in the Society's portrait is shown more clearly on the engraving of 1750 and has been identified by Alexander as that of Sir Ralph Winwood, engraved by Vertue in 1723.

Inscriptions

Inscription content

George Vertue painted by Thomas Gibson 1723 given to Soc. Ant by Mrs Vertue 1773

References

Reference (free text)

David Gaimster, Sarah McCarthy, and Bernard Nurse, eds., Making History, Antiquaries in Britain, 1707-2007 (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2007), p. 60, no. 30.Illustration, p. 60.

Oil on canvas portrait of George Vertue (1684-1756), in eighteenth century English running pattern frame (original to the picture).

George Vertue (1684-1756) was one of the leading engravers in the first half of the eighteenth century and noted for his exactness. He was a member of the Society from 1717 and the Society’s engraver until his death. His notebooks, full of information collected over many years, were compiled for a history of the arts in England and are still a major source on painting and the arts before 1756.