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A Porter of the Royal Academy, probably John Withers

Maker

(Artists)
1745-1806

Title

Date of Production

1792

Medium

pastel on paper

Dimensions

Height: 77 cm (paper)
Width: 64 cm (paper)

Accession Number

D.2001.XX.3

Mode of Acquisition

Sotheby's, purchase & grant aid, January 2001

Credit

The Courtauld, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust). Purchased by the Samuel Courtauld Trust with assistance from the Art Fund and V&A Purchase Grant Fund.

Copyright

Work in the public domain

Location

Not currently on display

Keywords

Label Text

This pastel portrays a porter of the Royal Academy, probably John Withers, standing in the entrance hall of the Academy’s premises at Somerset House. Holding an admission ticket and an exhibition catalogue, he greets visitors to the annual Summer Exhibition. Behind him, fashionable visitors jostle up the famously steep staircase to the Great Room on the top floor.

As an Academician, the pastellist John Russell would have known Withers well. This portrait was included in the Summer Exhibition of 1792 and displayed in this room.

Provenance

By descent to the artist's daughter, Henrietta Ann; her son Mainwaring Shurlock by 1894; Asher Wertheimer (d. 1920); by descent; Mrs Joan Conway; Sotheby's, 22 March 2000, lot 91; purchased by the Samuel Courtauld Trust with assistance from the Art Fund and V&A Purchase Grant Fund.

Exhibition History

The Great Spectacle: 250 Years of the Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 12/06/2018-19/08/2018

The Courtauld Collects - 20 Years of Acquisitions, Somerset House & London & England, 17/06/2010-19/09/2010

Below Stairs - 400 years of servants' portraits, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, 27/02/2004-31/05/2004 ...More

Below Stairs - 400 years of servants' portraits, National Portrait Gallery, London, 16/10/2003-11/01/2004 ...Less

Literature

The Great Spectacle: 250 Years of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 12 June - 19 August 2018, 2018
p. 26, cat. 6
ill. on p. 27

Shanes, Eric, 'More Art on the Line: The Royal Academy's Antique Room in the Exhibition of 1792' in 'The Burlington Magazine', Apr. 2008 - pp. 224-231; 150, 1261
p. 226
fig. 4 on p. 227

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