Lot 21: William Tate (1748-1806)

Portrait of a lady and a gentleman, possibly Daniel Daulby and his wife Elizabeth, full-length, with a dog, in the grounds of a country house
signed 'W:Tate./Pinx' (lower right)
oil on canvas
49 1/2 x 40 in. (125.7 x 101.7 cm.)

Possibly London, The Society of Artists, 1773, no. 335, as 'a Conversation, small-whole length'.

William Tate, who was born in Liverpool in September 1748, worked as a portrait painter in Liverpool and Manchester until he moved to Bath in 1804, where he died in 1806. Tate was from a family of Liverpool merchants who were friends of the artist Joseph Wright of Derby (1734-1797) from the time of his residence in Liverpool in the late 1760s. While in Liverpool Wright had for a time boarded with William Tate's brother Richard Tate (d.1787), who was a merchant and patron of the arts there, and became a close friend of the family. William Tate became a pupil of Wright in Liverpool around 1770-71 and the two remained friends for the rest of his life. He is also recorded as owning Wright's View of the Convent of S. Cosimato which had been presented to him by the artist (B. Nicholson, Joseph Wright of Derby, London, 1968, pp. 252-3, no. 264; now Walker Gallery, Liverpool), and also painted a portrait of Wright in 1782 (Nicholson, op.cit., p.138 and 139, fig. 134). Tate exhibited at the Society of Artists from 1771-75 and again in 1791. He entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1777, exhibiting twelve works there between 1776 and 1804, and his portraits show the strong influence of his early training with Wright. Stylistically, the present work would appear to date from the early 1770s. The pose and composition of the present work recall Wright, as do the jewellery and costume of the lady. The jewellery and costume in particular can be compared to those in Wright's Liverpool period portraits such as that of Frances Hesketh of 1769 (Walker Art Gallery), while the way in which Tate handles the landscape is also strongly reminiscent of Wright. A letter written by Wright in 1787 records the support he gave to his friend when the latter's relationship with the Academy was strained:

'My ingenious and very worthy friend Tate, whom you know, has not for several years past, owing to some ill treatment he met with at the Academy exhibited any pictures, by which omission he finds himself lost to the world and neglected. However he is now very advantageously fixed at Manchester where he is encouraged and respected equal to his wishes and he intends exhibiting this year'.

After Wright's death in 1797, Tate is recorded to have been in Derby 'diligently and successfully employed in finishing some of our late excellent friend's portraits'. William Tate's nephew Thomas Moss Tate, who was also an artist, and also became a close friend of Wright, probably owned the largest, though not the most important, collection of Wright's late landscapes in existence at the turn of the 19th century (Nicholson, op.cit., p. 139).

The sitters in the portrait are shown in a country setting in fashionable attire. The gentleman who is gesturing to his wife with his right hand, in which he holds a hat, is holding a gun with his left hand. It has been suggested that the sitters may be Daniel Daulby (1745/6-1798), a member of a well known family of Liverpool brewers, and his first wife, Elisabeth (neé Knowles, 1751-1775), on the basis of a comparison with the pair of half-length portraits of them by Tate in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, which are dated 1774. Daniel Daulby was an important collector of old master paintings and works by contemporary artists such as Wright of Derby and was also the author of A Descriptive Catalogue of the Works of Rembrandt and of his scholars, Bol, Livens, and van Vliet.. (Liverpool, 1796). However, the inventories of Daulby's collection prepared in the 1790 do not mention the picture.

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