File:Drawing (BM 1894,0417.12).jpg
Original file (1,288 × 1,600 pixels, file size: 532 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg)
Captions
Summary
[edit]drawing ( ) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Title |
drawing |
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Description |
English: Portrait once thought to be of Ann Thicknesse and now thought to be Mary Hoare or her sister-in-law Anne Hoare; nearly whole-length, seated, body turned slightly to right, eyes to front, playing a double-course six-string cithern or English guitar, wearing a knotted kerchief, fur-edged cape and white satin dress
Black chalk, heightened with white, on grey-green paper, squared for transfer |
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Depicted people | Portrait of: Ann Thicknesse | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Date |
between 1707 and 1792 date QS:P571,+1750-00-00T00:00:00Z/7,P1319,+1707-00-00T00:00:00Z/9,P1326,+1792-00-00T00:00:00Z/9 |
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Medium | paper | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Dimensions |
Height: 365 millimetres
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Collection |
institution QS:P195,Q6373 |
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Current location |
Prints and Drawings |
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Accession number |
1894,0417.12 |
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Notes |
The following text is from S. Lloyd and K Sloan, 'The Intimate Portrait', Edinburgh and London, 2008, p. 216, but please note, this was written when it was believed the sitter was Ann Thicknesse. The information about her in the entry is correct, but see the end of this comment to see why the drawing is now believed to be of Mary Hoare or Anne Hoare, who were both also amateur musicians: Ann Ford (1737-1824) married Philip Thicknesse as his third wife in 1762. She had been painted by Gainsborough in 1760 in a well-known full-length portrait (Cincinnati Art Museum) in which she was shown with the same instrument tucked under her arm and a viola da gamba in the background. The instrument is a double-course six-string cithern or English guitar and in Hoare's image she is shown playing it. This difference is significant, as Ann Ford was famous for her amateur performances in Bath in the late 1750s but was forbidden by her father to play in public and he had her arrested when she attempted to do so. Nevertheless, she pursued her plans, advertising performances in London while living under the protection of her friend, the current Mrs Thicknesse, in Bath from 1760 to 1761, raising substantial sums from her concerts but risking threats of impropriety. Instruments which required the performer to be seated, such as pianos, harpsichords or guitars with plucked strings, were deemed to be appropriate vehicles for the expression of 'delicate' feminine sensibility as long as they were played in private familial settings. Gainsborough's image reflected the contrasting proprieties of public and private performance, with provocative connotations in her cross-legged pose and the presence of the viola da gamba which was deemed to be an instrument for men. He knew she was 'partly admired & partly laugh'd at at every Tea Table' and decided to display the painting in his studio only and not publicly at the RA. Mrs Delany noted that it depicted her as 'a most extraordinary figure, handsome and bold; but I should be very sorry to have any one I loved set forth in such a manner' (cited in London 2002). William Hoare's portrait shows Ann actually performing, but with decided propriety. She married Philip Thicknesse six months after the death of his second wife and never performed in public again. That this is a domestic setting is evident from her cap and fur-trimmed cape which were worn indoors over her satin sack dress. Hoare's drawing is a record of an oil painting which was a pair to another of Philip Thicknesse; possibly marriage portraits, both are now lost. Hoare was in the habit of making these detailed chalk drawn records of his oils and there are several in the Museum's collection, including the record of Philip Thicknesse's portrait. Most of them are faintly squared, as here, for ease of reduction when copying the oil and most present slightly softer images than the more hard-edged paintings, which is probably due to the different medium. On the whole, Hoare made small compositional sketches in oil as preparation for his paintings. SELECTED LITERATURE: LB11; ECM 11; Bath 1990, no. 26; London 2002, no. 35; Perry 2007, pp. 160-2 Additional note (K Sloan, June 2010): This drawing came to the Museum as a pair with a portrait of a man, believed when it was acquired to be a portrait of Philip Thickness (BM 1894,0417.9). This portrait was identified as his wife Ann. Shortly after the 'Intimate Portrait' catalogue was published, Sue Sloman (author of 'Gainsborough in Bath', Yale, 2002) indicated that it may not be a portrait of Mrs Thicknesse at all. She had compared the image with Gainsborough's images of her and also with other portraits by William Hoare. There is a pastel portrait by William Hoare of Henry Hoare of Beckenham (1744-85, younger brother of Sir Richard Hoare, 1st Bt) at Stourhead and the sitter's features are very close to the man in the drawing that was described as Philip Thickness. Henry Hoare was married to the daughter of William Hoare, Mary Hoare, who was an artist and an amateur musician as well. But Henry Hoare also had a sister, Anne, who is shown playing a cithern in a portrait of her by Francis Cotes also at Stourhead. It is difficult to tell from the features which of them this drawing may be a portrait of, so it might be a portrait of either Mary or Anne Hoare. Also in 2010, this drawing was reproduced and discussed in B. Leca, (ed), 'Thomas Gainsborough and the Modern Woman', Cincinnati Art Museum, 2010, pp. 58 & 118. Unfortunately, in the reproduction on p. 58 it is mistakenly credited as being in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. |
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Source/Photographer | https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1894-0417-12 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Permission (Reusing this file) |
© The Trustees of the British Museum, released as CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 |
Licensing
[edit]This image is in the public domain because it is a mere mechanical scan or photocopy of a public domain original, or – from the available evidence – is so similar to such a scan or photocopy that no copyright protection can be expected to arise. The original itself is in the public domain for the following reason:
This tag is designed for use where there may be a need to assert that any enhancements (eg brightness, contrast, colour-matching, sharpening) are in themselves insufficiently creative to generate a new copyright. It can be used where it is unknown whether any enhancements have been made, as well as when the enhancements are clear but insufficient. For known raw unenhanced scans you can use an appropriate {{PD-old}} tag instead. For usage, see Commons:When to use the PD-scan tag. Note: This tag applies to scans and photocopies only. For photographs of public domain originals taken from afar, {{PD-Art}} may be applicable. See Commons:When to use the PD-Art tag. |
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Date/Time | Thumbnail | Dimensions | User | Comment | |
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current | 18:34, 5 May 2020 | 1,288 × 1,600 (532 KB) | Copyfraud (talk | contribs) | British Museum public domain uploads (Copyfraud/BM) William Hoare 1707 #15 |
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Horizontal resolution | 300 dpi |
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Vertical resolution | 300 dpi |
Image width | 3,458 px |
Image height | 4,295 px |
Color space | sRGB |
Software used | Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 (20060914.r.77) Windows |
Date and time of digitizing | 13:09, 18 July 2007 |
File change date and time | 13:13, 18 July 2007 |
Date metadata was last modified | 13:13, 18 July 2007 |