Lot Essay
Sir Hans Sloane was a doctor and traveller, and later president of the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal Society. He was also a voracious collector across a wide range of fields, and an early instigator of the modern cataloguing system, working closely with Linnaeus. His collection was left to the nation and formed the basis of the British Museum. Richardson and Sloane were contemporaries, and the present drawing relates to a pen and ink study in the British Museum of Sloane wearing a nightcap, which is dated 10 September 1740 (1888,0619.90), and another graphite on vellum drawing at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven. Susan Owens has written on Richardson's working methods (S. Owens, 'A note on Jonathan Richardson's working methods', The Burlington Magazine, CLVII, July 2015, pp. 457-459), and describes how the somewhat heavy-handed pen and ink studies (such as that in the British Museum) were taken from life, with the graphite on vellum sheets, such as the present drawing and the Yale study, worked up from the pen.
We are grateful to Susan Owens for her help in preparing this catalogue entry.
We are grateful to Susan Owens for her help in preparing this catalogue entry.