Roy Precious - Antiques & Fine Art has dated this piece to the 1750s.
Signed and dated "H. Pickering pinxt 1756" (H .Pickering painted this 1756).
"The book is 'Histoire de la Medecine' by Daniel Le Clerc, the seminal medical text, first published in Geneva in 1696, but this version looking like the Amsterdam version of 1723 (not that that is of any great relevance, other than intellectual snobbery -- a version had already been published in English, but that would be infra dig).
I thought it possible that the painting's date and composition might be significant, in other words that it perhaps marks the sitter's admission as a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. A biographical register of Fellows exists, but none of those admitted in 1755 or 1756 appear to have any Shropshire connection." (Richard Grigson)
HENRY PICKERING c.1720-1771.
At his best, as here, he is hardly to be distinguished from Thomas Hudson. Pickering's earliest known portrait is dateable to 1740. Vertue states that in 1745 Pickering returned from a trip to Italy and that he on occasion worked with Joseph Van Aken the drapery painter, as did Hudson.
He was working in London circa 1746, but also appears to have had a good following in the North Midlands. He seems to have moved about between Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cheshire and North Wales, all of which districts provided him with sitters. In 1759 he was living in Manchester, possibly in Deansgate and appears to have been there at his death. His dated works range from 1740 to 1770. His will (dated 1759) requested that his pictures 'may be finish'd by the Best Drapery Painter and then delivered to the Gentrey (sic) who have favoured me with their commands...'
SIZE: 56.75 x 46.25 inches inc. frame.
PROVENANCE: Deceased estate; for over 30 years in the private collection of an antiques dealer, who had bought it from a country house sale in Shropshire.
Roy Precious - Antiques & Fine Art has dated this piece to the 1750s.
Roy and nadine precious: specialists in portraiture from the 16th to the 20th century. Established in 1972.
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Portrait of a Gentleman, 1756, by Henry Pickering.
