Francis Cotes, 1726 - 1770 Portrait of a Gentleman Huntsman Wearing a Green Coat Trimmed with Gold Fringe, Holding a Hunting Whip

Francis Cotes, 1726 - 1770

Portrait of a Gentleman Huntsman wearing a Green Coat trimmed with Gold Fringe, Holding a Hunting Whip

oil on canvas

76.20 x 63.50 cm. (30 x 25 in.)

in a darwood carved Frame

Artist Biography

Cotes, Francis (1726–1770), portrait painter, was born on 20 May 1726 in the Strand, London, the eldest of four children of Robert Cotes (d. 1774), apothecary and former mayor of Galway, and his second wife, Elizabeth (b. c.1700, d. after 1775), daughter of Francis Lynn, chief secretary to the Royal African Company. Cotes's great-grandfather John Cotes held estates in Leicestershire, which he was forced to forfeit during the civil war, owing to his royalist allegiance. He moved to co. Roscommon, Ireland, where Cotes's grandfather, John, was born. The family retained strong English connections that resulted in Francis Cotes's father being appointed mayor of Galway by the crown. In 1717 he was tried for treason by the Irish parliament, and subsequently by Queen Anne's council, for failure to uphold the English government's repressive policy against the Roman Catholic community. Upon his acquittal, his political career over, he set up business in London, as an apothecary. His first marriage was to Anne Fowler, who died on 11 December 1722, their infant son Robert dying the following March. At the time of Francis Cotes's birth his father was living in the Strand, Francis's baptism being recorded on 29 May 1726 at the newly built church of St Mary-le-Strand. Following Cotes's birth, the family moved to Cork Street, Burlington Gardens, in Mayfair. Three further children were born: Robert, who died in infancy, Samuel Cotes (1734–1818), and a daughter, Frances-Maria, who also died in infancy.

Early years, 1741–1757

It is conjectured that Cotes entered into an apprenticeship with the painter George Knapton, about the time of his fifteenth birthday (Johnson, 2). In addition to learning his trade Cotes was probably introduced to the work of the old masters, Knapton having a reputation as a connoisseur as well as an artist with fashionable aristocratic connections. Indeed, it may have been at this time that Cotes painted a copy of ‘the Virgin and Child in crayons from Guido’, which he bequeathed to Knapton in his will. During the 1740s Knapton worked in oils and in crayons, then a fashionable medium for portraiture, influenced particularly by the Venetian pastellist Rosalba Carriera. Cotes had probably completed his apprenticeship with Knapton by 1747, the year of his first known signed and dated works, pastels of an unknown gentleman (Leicestershire Museums and Art Galleries) and Miss Catherine Wilson (priv. coll.). Cotes appears to have concentrated exclusively on pastels throughout the remainder of the 1740s and well into the 1750s. From the outset Cotes's clientele included distinguished members of the whig aristocracy, including Lady Georgiana Lennox, mother of Charles James Fox (1748; priv. coll.), Lord Carysfort (1751; priv. coll.), and the Hon. George Keppel, later third earl of Albemarle (1752; priv. coll.). At that time Cotes also painted pastel portraits of the Irish Gunning family, notably the sisters Maria and Elizabeth, then celebrated for their great beauty, and subsequently countess of Coventry and duchess of Hamilton and Argyll (NPG). Both portraits were engraved in mezzotint by James MacArdell in 1752, and offered for sale to the public from Cotes's father's house in Cork Street, which he then presumably used as a gallery to promote his work.

The middle period, 1757–1765

By the mid-1750s Cotes's pastel portraits assumed a greater sense of naturalism and individual character. In this he was particularly influenced by the Swiss painter Jean-Étienne Liotard (then working in England), and also by the German Anton-Raphael Mengs and the Frenchman Maurice-Quentin de la Tour. From thi