Gainsborough Dupont (1754-1797)

Portrait of the Right Hon. William Pitt (1759-1806), half length, in a painted oval

Details

Gainsborough Dupont (1754-1797)
Dupont, G.
Portrait of the Right Hon. William Pitt (1759-1806), half length, in a painted oval
oil on canvas
30 x 25in. (76.2 x 63.5cm.)

Provenance

Said to have been given by Thomas Gainsborough to Henry Golding, by whom bequeathed to
Richard Whitfield.
G. Whitfield-Hayes, Walton-on-Thames, England.
with Howard Young Galleries, New York.
Joseph L. Werner, Clayton, MO, and by descent to the present owners.

Literature

E.K. Waterhouse, Preliminary Check List of Portraits by Thomas Gainsborough, The Walpole Society, XXXIII, 1948-50, p. 85, no. 1312.

Exhibited

St. Louis, City Art Museum, Special Loan Exhibitions from St. Louis Collections, July 1935, p. 30, no. 8, as Thomas Gainsborough (lent by Joseph Werner).
San Francisco, Golden Gate International Exposition, Masterworks of Five Centuries, 1939, no. 126, illustrated, as Thomas Gainsborough (lent by Joseph Werner).
New York, World's Fair, Masterpieces of Art, May - Oct. 1940, p. 110, no. 156, as Thomas Gainsborough (lent by Joseph Werner).

Lot Essay

William Pitt the younger, Prime Minister of England, sat to Thomas Gainsborough in 1787, at the age of 27. Ellis Waterhouse notes that this work, which was perhaps completed by Gainsborough Dupont, was painted for the Marquess of Buckingham. He further notes that there are about twenty or so portraits of Pitt ascribed to the elder Gainsborough but that these are mostly by or after Gainsborough Dupont (E.K. Waterhouse, op. cit., pp. 85-6; and E. Waterhouse, Gainsborough, 1958, p. 85, under no. 545).

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