Portrait of Mrs. William Colquhoun of Wrotham, Norfolk, full-length in a lilac dress with a cloak, leaning against an urn in a landscape

Details

Francis Cotes, R.A. (1726-1770)
Portrait of Mrs. William Colquhoun of Wrotham, Norfolk, full-length in a lilac dress with a cloak, leaning against an urn in a landscape
signed, inscribed and dated 'Mrs. Colquhoun, mother of Mrs Edward Coke Francis Cotes R.A. px^t 1768.' (lower right)
oil on canvas
93 x 56½ in. (236.3 x 143.5 cm.)

Provenance

By descent in the family of the sitter to the Hon. Edward Keppel Coke, Longford Hall, Derbyshire;
His sale; Christie's, London, 27 April 1917, lot 129 (1,900 gns. to A. Wertheimer).
M. Knoedler & Co., New York, by 1924.

Literature

C. Winter, 'Francis Cotes, R.A., Part II', The Connoisseur, October 1931, vol. LXXXVIII, p. 250.
E.M. Johnson, Francis Cotes. Complete Edition with a Critical Essay and a Catalogue, London, 1976, pp. 93-94, cat. no. 256, pl. 84.

Exhibited

Providence, Rhode Island School of Design, Exhibition of 18th Century Portraits, November 1932, no. 7.

Special notice

Christies Interest in Property Consigned for Auction. From time to time, Christie''s may offer a lot which it or an affiliate owns in whole or in part. This is such a lot.

Lot Essay

Francis Cotes, the elder brother of the miniaturist Samuel Cotes (1734-1818), was born in London in 1726 and apprenticed to George Knapton (1698-1778) in the early 1740s. In his portraits after 1764, the draperies are often by Peter Toms, who also worked for Reynolds. From 1765, when he took a large house at 32 Cavendish Square, he was the most fashionable portrait painter after Reynolds and Gainsborough. He was a member of the Society of Artists and later a founding member of the Royal Academy.

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