Roy Precious - Antiques & Fine Art has dated this piece to the 18th Century.
Fond of hunting, drinking and socialising with others of his class .. and somehow fitting in time for Sunday services. Most pastoral work would be passed on to his curate.
This is a fine quality insightful portrait typical of Pickering's best work, it was part of the Howes Hicks Collection of family portraits,
REV JOHN BROWNE of Salperton Park (born 1668).
On the death of Howe Hicks (1689-1727) and his wife Mary Watts (circa 1694-1728) within a twelve month period, their children were taken in by Rev John Browne of Salperton Park. He later became father-in-law to his ward Sir Howe Hicks (1722-1801) and his daughter Martha became Lady Hicks.
Literature: 'A Cotswold Family' pp. 266-267 'He is truculent and red of face, with all the impossible truculence and the impossible redness of the Eighteenth Century, and the humour that is undoubtedly there too, gleams coarsely in the middle of it all'.
HENRY PICKERING (172 - circa 1775) was a fashionable and gifted portrait artist working in the style of the great Thomas Hudson. Hudson and Pickering were both known to use the famous drapery painter Joseph van Aken.
He travelled to Italy to learn from the old masters and seems to have returned to England, and London, by 1740. By the 1750s he seems to have worked as an itinerant portrait painter travelling around the country, eventually settling in Manchester in 1759.
SIZE: 38 x 33 inches including the frame.
PROVENANCE: By descent.
Roy Precious - Antiques & Fine Art has dated this piece to the 18th Century.
Roy and nadine precious: specialists in portraiture from the 16th to the 20th century. Established in 1972.
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Portrait of Rev John Browne C.1740 by Henry Pickering.
