Lot 16: Robert Edge Pine (c.1730-1788)

Portrait of David Garrick (1717-1779), half-length, in a black coat and wig, holding an open copy of Macbeth
inscribed 'MACBETH' (lower left, on the book)
oil on canvas
27 3/4 x 23 in. (70.5 x 58.4 cm.)

George A. Hearn, New York; American Art Galleries, New York, 25 February-4 March 1918, lot 290, to A.M. Neuberger.
Hiram Burlingham, New York; American Art Association, Anderson Galleries, New York, 11 January 1934, lot 64, to J.W. Spencer.
Private collection, Pennsylvania.

This portrait is one of eight identified portraits of David Garrick that Robert Edge Pine executed between 1775 and 1780, including one painted in 1775, now in the National Portrait Gallery, and another exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1780, entitled a Portrait of Mr Garrick.

David Garrick was the most celebrated actor and theatre manager of the eighteenth century, renowned for his dramatisations of Shakespeare's works. He produced twenty-four of Shakespeare's plays, and acted in seventeen, playing the title roles in Hamlet, King Lear and Macbeth. He caught the imagination of numerous artists working in the eighteenth century, including Hogarth, Zoffany, Hayman, Kauffman, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Dance and de Loutherbourg.

Robert Edge Pine, the son of a well-known engraver and printseller, John Pine (1691-1756), was renowned not only for portrait painting, but also for his historical and theatrical subjects. He won prizes at the Society of Arts for his history paintings of the 'Burghers of Calais'(1760) and 'Canute the Great Reproving his Courtiers for their Impious Flattery' (1763). Although born in London, Pine lived and worked in Bath between 1772 and 1780, where Garrick was known to visit for his health.

Robert Stewart, on the basis of a photograph, has suggested has the present work was probably painted from life, and possibly in Bath. Pine left England for Philadelphia in 1784, where he organised an exhibition of his work, and was very successful painting portraits of influential figures, such as George Washington. Pine lived in America until his death in 1788.

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