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Joseph Wright of Derby, A.R.A. (Derby 1734-1797)

Portrait of Francis Burdett, three-quarter-length, in the blue velvet coat, red waistcoat and yellow breeches of the Markeaton Hunt, holding a hat and a whip, in a wooded landscape

细节
Joseph Wright of Derby, A.R.A. (Derby 1734-1797)
Portrait of Francis Burdett, three-quarter-length, in the blue velvet coat, red waistcoat and yellow breeches of the Markeaton Hunt, holding a hat and a whip, in a wooded landscape
with identifying inscription 'Francis Burdett Esqre Obit V.P. 1794.' (lower right)
oil on canvas
50 x 40 in. (127 x 101.7 cm.)
in its original papier-mâché rococo giltwood frame, pierced and moulded
来源
Commissioned by Francis Noel Clarke Mundy, and by descent to
The Rev. W.G. Clarke-Maxwell, Markeaton Hall; Christie's, London, 15 May 1936, lot 19 (120 gns. to Fowles).
By descent, with the other portraits from the set, to
Major E.P.G. Miller-Mundy, M.C.; Christie's, London, 20 June 1975, lot 147 (sold £8,000).
Purchased by the present owner in 1990.
出版
B. Nicolson, Joseph Wright of Derby: Painter of Light, London and New York, I, pp. 2, 17, 28-9, 184-5, no. 27; and II, p. 21, pl. 38.
E.K. Waterhouse, The Dictionary of British 18th Century Painters in oils and crayons, Woodbridge, 1981, p. 426, illustrated.
J. Egerton, Wright of Derby, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London and elsewhere, 1990, p. 38, the suite of frames for the Markeaton Hunt portraits described by P. Mitchell under 'Wright's Picture Frames', pp. 275-76.
展览
Derby, Town Hall, 1762-63.
Derby, City Museum and Art Gallery, Bi-Centenary Exhibition of Works of Wright of Derby, 1934, no. 26.
注意事项
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Alexandra McMorrow
Alexandra McMorrow

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拍品专文

This portrait is one of the six exceptional works, collectively known as The Markeaton Hunt portraits, commissioned by Francis Mundy, circa 1762-63. These represent a high-point in Wright's early maturity, and hold their place in the pantheon of celebrated series of 'non-family' portraits painted in Britain, from Lely's Flag Captains and Beauties, through Kneller's Kit-Cat Club and Knapton's Dilettante Society, and arguably culminating in Lawrence's portraits of Allied Leaders in the Waterloo Chamber, Windsor Castle.

The commission seems to have been made soon after Mundy, aged twenty-three, inherited Markeaton Hall and its considerable estates near Derby, in June 1762. The inspiration behind the idea was presumably the commission of two groups of portraits of friends, both of which included Francis Mundy's father, Wrightson, which had earlier been given to Arthur Devis.

Most of the sitters in the Markeaton Hunt series were more than just friends on the hunting field. In the case of Francis Burdett, Mundy's mother was a Burdett, and Mundy himself married Francis's sister Elizabeth. Francis Burdett, of Foremark Hall, Derbyshire, was born on 22 April 1743, the son of Sir Robert Burdett, 4th Bt., and his first wife Elizabeth, only daugher of Sir Charles Sedley, Bt. On 30 December he married Eleanor, daughter and co-heiress of William Jones of Ramsbury Manor, Wiltshire; their son Francis (1770-1844), one of the most celebrated radicals of his age, succeeded as the 5th baronet.

All six pictures were framed en suite in exceptional rococo frames, of which Paul Mitchell (op. cit.) comments 'Surviving examples of papier-mâché frames are extremely rare and there can be few finer than those made for Wright's Markeaton Hunt group.'