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拍品專文
Oil portraits by John Sell Cotman are rare, although he was described in a catalogue of his work of 1808 as 'Mr. J. S. Cotman, Portrait-Painter' (S. D. Kitson, The Life of John Sell Cotman, 1937, p. 105). He may have planned to make a living from portraiture when he moved back from London to his home town of Norwich in 1806. The old label on the reverse of this painting suggests that it may represent the artist's youngest brother Henry, who was twenty years his junior. There is a definite family likeness between this portrait and a camera lucida portrait of John Sell Cotman made by John Varley in 1810 (Lowell Libson, Cornelius Varley, The Art of Observation, ex. cat., 2005, p. 165, no. 95).
This portrait bears some resemblance to two portraits of Henry that Cotman exhibited in Norwich in 1808. Both were genre or fancy pictures rather than straightforward portraits and were titled accordingly, A Boy at Marbles (no. 7 in the 1808 exhibition, now Norwich Castle Museum) and A Beggar Boy (no. 6, reproduced in J. Walpole, Art and Artists of the Norwich School, 1997, p. 76). This portrait may have been another of Cotman's 1808 exhibits, the one enigmatically entitled 'Portrait: 'For, I had heard of battles, and I long'd to follow to the field some warlike Lord' Douglas.' (no. 88). This quotation is taken from the ballad Norval on the Grampian Hills, on which the playwright John Home (1722-1808) based his tragedy Douglas. Cotman is likely to have been aware of John Opie's full-length portrait of William Henry West Betty in the character of the Young Norval, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1804.
Thomas Laughton (1903-1984), who once owned this picture, was the brother of the actor Charles Laughton (1899-1962). The Laughton brothers' parents owned the Victoria Hotel, Scarborough. Tom Laughton continued in the hotel trade, and both Charles and Tom collected pictures. Much of the permanent collection of Scarborough Art Gallery is made up by paintings left to the institution by Tom Laughton.
This portrait bears some resemblance to two portraits of Henry that Cotman exhibited in Norwich in 1808. Both were genre or fancy pictures rather than straightforward portraits and were titled accordingly, A Boy at Marbles (no. 7 in the 1808 exhibition, now Norwich Castle Museum) and A Beggar Boy (no. 6, reproduced in J. Walpole, Art and Artists of the Norwich School, 1997, p. 76). This portrait may have been another of Cotman's 1808 exhibits, the one enigmatically entitled 'Portrait: 'For, I had heard of battles, and I long'd to follow to the field some warlike Lord' Douglas.' (no. 88). This quotation is taken from the ballad Norval on the Grampian Hills, on which the playwright John Home (1722-1808) based his tragedy Douglas. Cotman is likely to have been aware of John Opie's full-length portrait of William Henry West Betty in the character of the Young Norval, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1804.
Thomas Laughton (1903-1984), who once owned this picture, was the brother of the actor Charles Laughton (1899-1962). The Laughton brothers' parents owned the Victoria Hotel, Scarborough. Tom Laughton continued in the hotel trade, and both Charles and Tom collected pictures. Much of the permanent collection of Scarborough Art Gallery is made up by paintings left to the institution by Tom Laughton.