Fine 18th English oil on panel portrait of the celebrated drapery painter Alexander van Aken. Likely a self portrait, it depicts the artist three-quarter length is his studio wearing red robes against red drapery wearing a turban and caught in the act of painting. Drapery painters were specialist painters who completed the dress, costumes and other accessories worn by the subjects of portrait paintings and from roughly 1725 to 1760 a large majority of British portraits� clothing & landscapes were painted by the workshop of Alexander Van Haecken and his brother Joseph (d. 1749).Working for portrait painters with a large clientele, the brothers were in fact recognised as amongst the foremost drapery painters active in mid-18th-century England and the link between the brothers and the portrait painter Thomas Hudson and the similarities among Van Haecken�s sketches at Scotland�s National Gallery of Art and surviving portraits is well documented.The drapery painters work was ce...