Lot 23: William Dobson

William Dobson
1611-1646
portrait of an officer
half length, wearing armour
oil on canvas, in a carved wood frame
60.5 by 49.5 cm., 23 3/4 by 19 1/2 in.
This fine work is an example of the strongly characterised portraits of Royalist Officers which Dobson produced in Oxford whilst the King's Court was there between 1642 and 1646. As Malcolm Rogers has pointed out, the majority of Dobson's sitters were fighting for the King and had limited opportunity between campaigns to come to the artist's studio, so he evolved a particular form of presentation suited both to their forthright character and to the limited time available.
The portrait was identified in an early nineteenth century engraving as being of Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex (1591-1646), the celebrated parliamentary general, but it does not compare with other images of him and Dobson painted only Royalist sitters. The portrait seems to have passed from the Duke of Sutherland at Lilleshall, Shropshire, to his neighbour, Sir John Hanmer, and when it was sold from Bettisfield Park it appeared with several other Sutherland portraits.
Provenance:
George Granville Leveson-Gower, Marquess of Stafford and Duke of Sutherland (1758-1833);
By descent to Cromartie, 4th Duke of Sutherland (recorded as at Lilleshall in 1909);
The Hanmer family, Bettisfield Park, Flintshire;
J. Broome, Bettisfield Park, by whom sold, Peter Wilson Auctioneers, 14th July 1999, lot 81
Literature:
J.P. Neale, Views of the Seats of Noblemen, etc..., 1818 (under Trentham Hall as hanging in the New Library);
Catalogue of the Pictures at Lilleshall, 1909, p.15, no.41 (in the Duchess's Sitting Room)
Engraved:
by E. Scriven, published 1824 (as of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex in the collection of the Marquess of Stafford);
by H.T. Ryall for Edmund Lodge's Portraits of Illustrious Personages of Great Britain, 1835, Volume VI, no.110