Period Portraits has dated this Georgian Oil Portrait Painting to the 18th Century.
1675 - 1739). The elegant dark haired sitter is pictured three half-length within an oval cartouche, with a tree filled landscape and sunset background behind her.
The as yet unknown beauty is expensively dressed in the high status and fashionable brightly coloured clothing of the period, namely deep blue silk or velvet dress over a white chemise, accentuated by a warm silk ribbon (yellow/gold). Jervas was famous (and sometimes criticised by contemporaries) for his preoccupation with silk and satin textures. Happily by popularising portraying aristocratic women in loose, casual, garments as opposed to stiff court dress, his portraits often have the poetic, and casual elegance that we see here.
Our sitter is every inch the baroque beauty with her soft and luminous skin tones. Jervas no doubt learnt this technique when studying under the great Godfrey Kneller who was celebrated for his smooth and delicate rendering of skin in his portraits of high society women. She has chestnut hair which tumbles naturalistically around her shoulders and her perfect lips are shaped in a Cupid’s bow and they contrasting sharply with her pale skin.
Beneath her thin, highly arched, elongated brows, she gazes directly at the viewer and engages us with her large almond-shaped eyes.
Fine,
Charles Jervas (c. 1675 – 1739)
Jervas was an Irish portrait painter, translator, and art collector. Born in County Offaly, Ireland around 1675, Jervas studied in London, England as an assistant under Sir Godfrey Kneller between 1694 and 1695.
Painting portraits of the city''s intellectuals, among them such personal friends as Jonathan Swift and the poet Alexander Pope (both now in the National Portrait Gallery, London), Charles Jervas became a popular artist often referred to in the works of literary figures of the period.
Jervas gave painting lessons to Pope at his house in Cleveland Court, St James''''s, which Pope mentions in his poem, To Belinda on the Rape of the Lock, written 1713, published 1717 in ''''Poems on Several Occasions''''.
With his growing reputation, Jervas succeeded Kneller as Principal Portrait Painter to King George I in 1723, and continued to live in London until his death in 1739, although he made made lengthy visits to Ireland.
This fine work is in an excellent state of conservation and is ready to hand and enjoy in its original hand carved and gilded early 18th century frame which has a wonderful warm patina.
Higher resolution images on request.
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Canvas: 70cm x 65cm.
Framed: 86cm x 74cm.
Period Portraits has dated this Georgian Oil Portrait Painting to the 18th Century.
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CHARLES JERVAS (1675 - 1739) - PORTRAIT OF A BEAUTY IN A BLUE DRESS.
