This tender double portrait of a mother and her daughter is beautifully composed and executed.
The positioning of the sitters arms and heads sweeps the viewer's eye round in an embracing circle within which is a timeless display of love and affection of a mother and her child.
At the base of the column is the signature "Weaver". There was a portraitist, M. Weaver, working in Bath who is documented as paying a visit to Ireland in 1766/67, but this is all that is recorded of him.
Whether the artist is that Weaver or another is purely academic, what matters is that the artist had considerable talent and insight into the humanity of his sitters, and thus was able to express this love without in any way being overly sentimental.
In his painting style he was clearly influenced by the fashionable John Hoppner.
With Gainsborough and Reynolds, JOHN HOPPNER (1758 - 1810) was one of the leading portrait painters in late eighteenth-century Britain. He entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1775, where he won a Gold Medal in 1782. His rapid rise was accompanied by rumours (never denied by Hoppner) that he was the illegitimate son of the future King George III, and it is true that in his education and early career Hoppner benefited from a considerable degree of royal sponsorship. He was brought up as a child of the Chapel Royal, tutored in the Royal Library where King George paid great attention to his progress, and finally presented him with an allowance in order that he might establish himself as a painter.
By the late 1780s Hoppner was a regular contributor to the Royal Academy exhibitions and quickly established himself as a fashionable portrait painter. In 1789 he succeeded Reynolds in his appointment as painter to the Prince of Wales in 1789, many of whose circle he painted.
SIZE: 33 x 26.25 inches inc. frame.
PROVENANCE: English Private Collection.
VERSO: old framer's label for A. R. Skillen & Co. Bloomsbury.
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Sold.....portrait of Mother and Child C.1795-1800 by Weaver.
