Lot 1604 Dα

At the time of its first known public exhibition in Dublin 1872, the identity of both the artist and the sitter of this painting had been lost. The boy was catalogued as ‘A Spanish Youth’ for the Dublin Exhibition, perhaps due to the sitter’s costume. It is precisely this interesting costume which provides us some notion as to the origin and context of the painting.
The young man is dressed in a midnight blue doublet with a lace collar, complemented by cream satin knee breeches with bows and a blue sash laid behind him: accoutrements typical of the 17th century, the type most commonly associated with portraits by Van Dyck. A century later, although the garment was no longer contemporary, an effusion of these portraits began to appear once more in Britain, following the fashion created by Thomas Gainsborough’s 1770 painting Blue Boy. Nearly all the great 18th century portraitists, from Pompeo Batoni and Allan Ramsay to Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds, copied Van Dyck's costumes, poses and compositions. The 17th century costume had now been associated with this style and was irrevocably referred to as ‘Van Dyckian dress’.
It would seem therefore that the present painting, typical of the late 18th century may have been a direct commission by the quaker merchant and prolific collector Cooper Penrose during his lifetime. Interestingly, the work has been recently attributed to Rev. Matthew William Peters, an English portrait and genre painter who later became an Anglican clergyman. We are grateful to Dr Martin Postle for supporting the attribution on the basis of a photograph.