Allegorical Painting of Two Ladies, English School

Last updated
Allegorical Painting of Two Ladies Anon (English School) - double portrait - circa 1650.jpg
Allegorical Painting of Two Ladies

Allegorical Painting of Two Ladies, English School is a 17th-century allegorical painting by an unknown artist, and dated from the 1650s. For its period, the painting is considered unusual in its depiction of a black woman and a white woman sitting side by side. [1]

Contents

Description

The painting depicts two women, one black and one white, sitting next to each other, with their faces covered in beauty patches. The painting is unusual for the time in its depiction of the sitters as equals. [2] [3] The women are presented as companions with similar dress, makeup, hair, and jewellery. The work was created c.1650 is probably not a portrait of real sitters, but an allegory with relevance within contemporaneous British print culture. [4]

Above the women is the inscription, "I black with white bespott you white with blacke this evil proceeds from thy proud hart then take her, Devill". The writing is likely intended to be moralizing, condemning the use of cosmetics and especially beauty patches, which were popular adornments at the time. [5] In 1650, an act to forbid beauty patches was introduced to Parliament, although it was not passed. [6]

Provenance

The painting originates from the estate of Lloyd Tyrell-Kenyon, 6th Baron Kenyon (1947–2019). Tyrell-Kenyon was quoted as saying in 1949 that “We have a curious picture which has hung here for many years, but of which I know of no real explanation.” It was in his manor house in Shropshire, England since at least the nineteenth century. [7]

Export bar and acquisition

On 23 June 2021, the painting was sold at a small auction house in Shropshire with an estimate of £2000–4000. There was a fierce bidding war due to the inherent sociological interest of the allegorical depiction of a dark-skinned woman, and the final hammer price was £220,000, before the 20% buyer's premium. It was the highest sum ever paid for an item at the Shropshire auction house. [7]

After its sale, the purchaser applied for an export licence. [5] The British government subsequently barred the painting from export in the hopes that a UK institution could purchase the painting within a time limit, a routine action intended to prevent overseas buyers from acquiring culturally important artworks. [8] [9] [10] [5]

The painting's export bar was set to be deferred on March 9, 2022. [11] On 23 June 2023, The Guardian reported that the painting had been "saved" for Britain by Compton Verney Art Gallery for £300,000, with the help of grants from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Victoria and Albert Museum valued at £154,600 and £50,000 respectively. [12]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hierarchy of genres</span> Ranks of different genres in an art form in terms of their prestige and cultural value

A hierarchy of genres is any formalization which ranks different genres in an art form in terms of their prestige and cultural value.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bartholomeus van der Helst</span> Dutch painter (1613–1670)

Bartholomeus van der Helst was a Dutch painter. Considered to be one of the leading portrait painters of the Dutch Golden Age, his elegant portraits gained him the patronage of Amsterdam's elite as well as the Stadtholder's circle. Besides portraits, van der Helst painted a few genre pictures as well as some biblical scenes and mythological subjects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lavinia Fontana</span> Italian artist (1552–1614)

Lavinia Fontana was an Italian Mannerist painter active in Bologna and Rome. She is best known for her successful portraiture, but also worked in the genres of mythology and religious painting. She was trained by her father, Prospero Fontana. She is regarded as the first female career artist in Western Europe, as she relied on commissions for her income. Her family relied on her career as a painter, and her husband served as her agent and raised their 11 children. She was perhaps the first female artist to paint female nudes, but this is a topic of controversy among art historians.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gonzales Coques</span> Flemish painter (c. 1616–1684)

Gonzales Coques was a Flemish painter of portraits and history paintings. Because of his artistic proximity to and emulation with Anthony van Dyck he received the nickname de kleine van Dyck. Coques was also active as an art dealer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cornelius Johnson (artist)</span> English painter (1593–1661)

Cornelius Johnson was an English painter of portraits of Dutch or Flemish parentage. He was active in England, from at least 1618 to 1643, when he moved to Middelburg in the Netherlands to escape the English Civil War. Between 1646 and 1652 he lived in Amsterdam, before settling in Utrecht, where he died.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dutch Golden Age painting</span> 17th-century Dutch painting

Dutch Golden Age painting is the painting of the Dutch Golden Age, a period in Dutch history roughly spanning the 17th century, during and after the later part of the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) for Dutch independence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pietro Paolini</span> Italian painter

Pietro Paolini, called il Lucchese was an Italian painter of the Baroque period. Working in Rome, Venice and finally his native Lucca, he was a follower of Caravaggio to whose work he responded in a very personal manner. He founded an Academy in his hometown, which formed the next generation of painters of Lucca.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michiel Sweerts</span> Flemish painter and printmaker (1618–1664)

Michiel Sweerts or Michael Sweerts was a Flemish painter and printmaker of the Baroque period, who is known for his allegorical and genre paintings, portraits and tronies. The artist led an itinerant life and worked in Rome, Brussels, Amsterdam, Persia and India (Goa).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Portraits of Shakespeare</span> Visual representations of William Shakespeare

No contemporary physical description of William Shakespeare is known to exist. The two portraits of him that are the most famous are the engraving that appears on the title-page of the First Folio, published in 1623, and the sculpture that adorns his memorial in Stratford upon Avon, which dates from before 1623. Experts and critics have argued that several other paintings from the period may represent him, and more than 60 portraits purporting to be of Shakespeare were offered for sale to the National Portrait Gallery within four decades of its foundation in 1856, but in none of them has Shakespeare's identity been proven.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tronie</span> Type of Dutch / Flemish Baroque painting

A tronie is a type of work common in Dutch Golden Age painting and Flemish Baroque painting that depicts an exaggerated or characteristic facial expression. These works were not intended as portraits or caricatures but as studies of expression, type, physiognomy or an interesting character such as an old man or woman, a young woman, the soldier, the shepherdess, the "Oriental", or a person of a particular race.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jane Pemberton Small</span> Subject of a portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger

Jane Small (c. 1518–1602) was a daughter of Christopher Pemberton, a Northamptonshire gentleman. She is well known as the subject of a portrait miniature by the famous 16th-century German artist Hans Holbein the Younger, painted about 1540. Holbein was known as a painter of the English court, where his paintings included those of King Henry VIII and several of his wives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oriental carpets in Renaissance painting</span> Aspect of art history

Carpets of Middle-Eastern origin, either from Anatolia, Persia, Armenia, Levant, the Mamluk state of Egypt or Northern Africa, were used as decorative features in Western European paintings from the 14th century onwards. More depictions of Oriental carpets in Renaissance painting survive than actual carpets contemporary with these paintings. Few Middle-Eastern carpets produced before the 17th century remain, though the number of these known has increased in recent decades. Therefore, comparative art-historical research has from its onset in the late 19th century relied on carpets represented in datable European paintings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leendert van der Cooghen</span> Dutch painter

Leendert van der Cooghen was a Dutch painter, draughtsman and printmaker. An amateur artist of independent means, he left a small oeuvre of which his drawings represent the major portion. Recognised by his fellow artists, he was admitted to the Haarlem Guild of Saint Luke in 1652.

<i>Diana and Her Companions</i> Painting by Johannes Vermeer c. 1653–1656

Diana and Her Companions is a painting by Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer completed in the early to mid-1650s, now at the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague. Although the exact year is unknown, the work may be the earliest painting of the artist still extant, with some art historians placing it before Christ in the House of Martha and Mary and some after.

<i>Beauty Revealed</i> Painting by Sarah Goodridge

Beauty Revealed is an 1828 self-portrait by the American artist Sarah Goodridge. Depicting only the artist's bared breasts surrounded by white cloth, the 2.6-by-3.1-inch painting, originally backed with paper, is now in a modern frame. Goodridge, aged forty when she completed the watercolor portrait miniature on a piece of ivory, presented the breasts as youthful and individualized. She employed a frontal view that showed only the area from the collarbone to just underneath the breasts, thereby anonymizing the portrait.

<i>Portrait of Dorothea Berck</i> Painting by Frans Hals

Portrait of Dorothea Berck is a 1644 painting by Frans Hals that is in the collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art. It depicts Dorothea Berck at age 51, the wife of the prosperous Haarlem merchant Joseph Coymans, whose portrait Hals also painted. Both paintings were executed on the occasion of their daughter Isabella's wedding, whose marriage pendants Hals also painted.

<i>Oval Portrait of a Woman</i> (Rembrandt, New York) 1633 painting by Rembrandt

Oval Portrait of a Woman is a 1633 portrait painting painted by Rembrandt. It shows a woman with a millstone collar and diadem cap. It is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nicola van Houbraken</span> Italian painter (1660 – 1723)

Nicola or Nicolino or Niccolinovan Houbraken, also known as Nicolino Vanderbrach da Messina and Nicola Messinese was an Italian painter of the late-Baroque who was of Flemish descent. He specialized in paintings depicting playful arrangements of fruits, vegetables, vegetation, animals, game in interiors or in forests. He also painted allegories and garland paintings. His work was appreciated by the Medici court in Florence.

<i>Portrait of a Lady, probably a Member of the Cromwell Family</i> Painting by Hans Holbein the Younger

Portrait of a Lady, probably a Member of the Cromwell Family is an oil on panel portrait completed in around 1535–1540 by Hans Holbein the Younger now at the Toledo Museum of Art. The painting shows an elegantly but demurely dressed young woman sitting against a blue-grey background. The subject of this portrait is thought to be a member of the Cromwell family, perhaps Thomas Cromwell's daughter-in-law, Elizabeth Seymour, sister to Jane, third consort of Henry VIII.

<i>Portrait of a Girl</i> (after Rembrandt) 1632 painting after Rembrandt

Portrait of a Girl is a circa 1632 portrait painting formerly attributed to Rembrandt. It shows a woman with a millstone collar and diadem cap. It was sold on 24 August 2024 for US$1,468,750 in Thomaston, Maine, near where it had been stored since 1970 in the collection of Cary W. Bok. It had been in the collection of Abraham Bredius who lent it for several years to the Mauritshuis, but it landed up in the Philadelphia collection of Mrs. Zimbalist, who in turn left it to her son Cary W. Bok, who outlived his mother by less than a year.

References

  1. Department for Digital, Cultural, Media, & Sport (December 10, 2021). "Rare painting from 17th century at risk of leaving UK". GOV.UK.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  2. Sana Noor Haq. "'Extremely rare' 17th-century painting of Black woman with White companion placed under export bar from UK". CNN.
  3. "Export bar placed on 17th century painting exploring race and gender". Belfasttelegraph.
  4. Department for Digital, Cultural, Media, & Sport (December 10, 2021). "Rare painting from 17th century at risk of leaving UK". GOV.UK.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  5. 1 2 3 Chesters, Laura (14 December 2021). "Rare 17th century English School allegorical painting barred from export in hope it is saved for the nation". www.antiquestradegazette.com. Retrieved 1 January 2022.
  6. The June Fine Art & Antique Auction (23 June 2021). "English school, circa 1650, Portrait of two ladies, both half length, Patch marks". www.the-saleroom.com. Retrieved 23 June 2023.
  7. 1 2 Capon, Alex. "Pick of the week: £220,000 for enigmatic faces of the Interregnum".
  8. Sanderson, David. "Export bar on painting of race equality" via www.thetimes.co.uk.
  9. "Rare painting from 17th century at risk of leaving UK".
  10. "The U.K. Has Barred a Rare 17th-Century Portrait of an Upper-Class Black Sitter from Export to Give Museums the Chance to Buy It". 13 December 2021.
  11. "'Extremely rare' 17th-century painting featuring Black woman placed under export bar by UK". TheGrio. 2021-12-16. Retrieved 2022-02-17.
  12. "'Highly unusual': lost 17th-century portrait of black and white women as equals saved for UK". 23 June 2023.