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Francis CotesA Pair of Portraits1751
1751
$68,282.60
£50,000
€58,203.06
CA$94,071.78
A$102,521.68
CHF 54,289.65
MX$1,231,393.37
NOK 687,318.98
SEK 631,922.20
DKK 434,712.36
About the Item
Pastel on paper stretched on canvas
Each 23 ¼ x 19 ¾ inches; 59 x 50 cm
Framed dimensions, each: 83 x 67.5 cm
Both signed ‘F. Cotes Px 1751’
Collections:
Captain Penton;
Christie’s, 18 April 1980, lot.68;
Private collection to 2025;
Lowell Libson
Jonny Yarker Ltd.
Literature:
Neil Jeffares, Dictionary of pastellists before 1800 (online edition),
cat. no. J.243.761
‘With respect to Crayon Painting, the present age has produced an uncommon instance of excellence in one of our own Countrymen. I mean the late Mr. Francis Cotes…it seems to be universally allowed by all good judges, that as a Crayon Painter, this celebrated Artist excelled most of his Contemporaries.’
This fine pair of pastels are both signed and dated by Francis Cotes 1751 and were made when he was at the height of his powers as an artist. Housed in spectacular carved, English Rococo frame, the portraits demonstrate Cotes’s remarkable skill as a pastellist. Cotes, one of the most celebrated portraitists of the mid-century, a founder member of the Royal Academy and widely patronised by London society, was enjoying a reputation equal to that of Reynolds at the time of his premature death in 1770. As his pupil James Russell observed, it was ‘universally allowed’ that as a ‘Crayon Painter’, Cotes ‘excelled most of his Contemporaries’, who included Rosalba Carriera, Jean-Étienne Liotard and Jean Baptiste Perronneau.
Born in London in 1726, Cotes was of Irish extraction (his father had been mayor of Galway in 1716). He spent his working life in Britain and was apprenticed to the successful portraitist and print-seller George Knapton in 1747. His earliest works appear similar in style and execution to those of Knapton, and another of Knapton’s pupils, Arthur Pond. By 1763 Cotes’s had established a successful portrait practice, enabling him to take a lease on a house at 32 Cavendish Square. Situated on the south side of the square, it was described in the sale catalogue after his death as a ‘Large and commodious House, with an elegant Suite of Five Rooms on the First Floor, and Coach Houses and Stabling.’ The house, located in a fashionable part of London, was remodelled by Cotes to include, in addition to his own studio, a room for pupils to paint in, and a gallery or ‘Shew Room’.
Expertly worked in pastel, this pair of pastels show the refinement of Cote’s technique and mastery of the medium, a mastery that may have resulted from a rivalry with the Swiss pastellist Jean-Étienne Liotard who was also practicing in London at this date. In his Elements of Painting with Crayons, published in 1777, John Russell outlined the method of executing pastel portraits he learnt from Cotes. We therefore have a remarkable explication of Cotes’s working practice. In line with contemporary painting, the ‘attitude’ of the sitter was essential, ‘if a young Lady, express more vivacity than in the majestic beauty of a middle-aged Woman.’
After explaining the rudiments of preparing the paper, which was generally blue in colour and stuck down on canvas, Russell discusses the method of taking the likeness: beginning with a sketch, before laying in the features. This having been completed, the painter uses a: ‘Crayon of pure Carmine’ to ‘carefully draw the Nostril and Edge of the Nose, next the shadow, then, with the faintest Carmine Teint, lay in the highest light upon the Nose and Forehead, which must be executed broad.’ Once this ‘dead-colouring’ was finished, the painter was instructed to ‘sweeten the whole together, by rubbing it over with his finger.’ Then the background was added, applied only very thinly closest to the head, to aid the illusion of volume, and finally the finishing ‘teints’: ‘vermillion’ on the forehead; the cheeks ‘a few touches of the orange-coloured Crayon’ and for the eyes ‘the most difficult feature to execute’, he advised using a sharpened pastel and the ‘finger as little as possible’. All these charac¬teristic elements can be seen masterfully deployed by Cotes in this fine pair of portraits.
Edward Edwards recorded that Cotes charged ‘twenty guineas for a three-quarter, forty for a half-length, and eighty for a whole length’. In line with other pastellists of the period, Cotes would have offered frames and glasses at an additional cost. The evidence suggests that Cotes generally supplied three types of frame: a standard Carlo Maratta pattern; an English Palladian frame and a French-inspired rococo frame, which as Jacob Simon has pointed out, was an anglicised version of the type favoured by Jean-Étienne Liotard. This elaborate, carved profile is precisely the option used by Cotes in the present pair of portraits.
- Creator:Francis Cotes (1726 - 1770, English)
- Creation Year:1751
- Dimensions:Height: 23.23 in (59 cm)Width: 19.69 in (50 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:London, GB
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU1507217333242
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