LOT DETAILS

Materials:

oil on canvas, framed as an oval

Measurements:

29.72 in. (75.50 cm.) (height) by 24.80 in. (63.00 cm.) (width)

Literature:

E. K. Waterhouse, 'A Gainsborough Bill for the Prince of Wales', in The Burlington Magazine, vol. LXXXVIII, November 1946, p. 276; ; A. Aspinall, The correspondence of George Prince of Wales, vol. I, 1770–1789, London 1963, pp. 83, 93, 94 and 96; ; O. Millar, The later Georgian pictures in the collection of Her Majesty the Queen, Oxford 1969, p. 35;; J. Hamilton, Gainsborough: A Portrait, London 2017, p. 341;; H. Belsey, Thomas Gainsborough. The portraits, fancy pictures and copies after Old Masters, New Haven and London 2019, vol. II, pp. 860–61, no. 928, reproduced in colour (as whereabouts unknown).

Provenance:

Commissioned by the sitter and sent to his younger brother, Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany (1763–1827), then attending military academy in Germany, in December 1782; ; Perhaps Thomas Purvis QC;; His sale, London, Christie’s, 1 June 1849, lot 21 (as ‘Frederick, Duke of York, in Green Coat’), for £5–10s., to Anthony;; James Whatman, M.P. (1813–1887), Vinters, Maidstone;; His posthumous sale, London, Christie’s, 2 July 1887, lot 28 (as a portrait of the Duke of Cumberland), for £94–10s. to Lesser;; George Harland-Peck (1842–1920), London;; His posthumous sale, London, Christie’s, 25 June 1920, lot 64, for £399 to Gooden & Fox;; William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme (1851–1925);; His posthumous sale, New York, Anderson Galleries, 17–18 February 1926, lot 104;; With Newhouse Galleries, New York, 1958;; Anonymous sale, New York, Sotheby’s, 27 May 2004, lot 273 (as ‘Gainsborough Dupont, Portrait of Henry Frederick, Duke of Cumberland’);; The Forbes Collection, Old Battersea House, London;; Their sale, Lyon and Turnbull, Edinburgh, 1 November 2011, lot 141 (as ‘Gainsborough Dupont, Portrait of Henry Frederick, Duke of Cumberland’).