Lot 337: WORLIDGE, THOMAS (1700-1766, painter and etcher)

SELF-PORTRAIT, pencil drawing, head and shoulders, wearing a wig, in a roundel, framed and glazed, size of image 8 x 8 inches (20 x 20 cm), overall size c.14 x 14 inches (36 x 36 cm), no date [but eighteenth century]

Worlidge is best remembered as an early Rembrandtist, imitating the drypoint style of the master, making direct copies of his prints and producing compositions of his own 'after the manner of Rembrandt'. Indeed he is recognised as having been the single most active figure in the Rembrandt revival in eighteenth-century England. As the British School of Painting emerged in the eighteenth century, copies of Old Master paintings were highly sought after by artists who had very few British works to refer to as models. It is likely that Thomas Gainsborough, William Hoare and Thomas Barker were introduced to Rembrandt's work through Worlidge's copies.

Worlidge also reintroduced into England the art of painting on glass, painted miniature portraits, and produced etchings of gems from the antique. He is said to have been a hot-tempered, foul-mouthed, gluttonous drunkard who fathered thirty-two children.

PROVENANCE: L.G. Duke; Theodore Besterman.

REFERENCES: Thomas Worlidge and the Influence of Rembrandt in 18th-century Bath, Victoria Art Gallery, Bath; Dictionary of National Biography; 'Rembrandt in 18th-century England', Yale Center for British Art, 1983.