Lowell Libson & Jonny Yarker Ltd

  • Oil on canvas
  • 50 × 40 inches · 1270 × 1016 mm
  • Inscribed on a letter on the table: Rear Admiral Graves.../Plymo.../Admiralty...
    Painted 1785

Collections

  • Admiral Thomas Graves (1725-1802); 
  • Thomas, Lord Graves (1775-1830), son of the above; 
  • Clarence, 4th Lord Graves (1847–1904), grandson of the above, to 1896;
  • Thomas Agnew & Son, acquired from the above;
  • Bought from the above by Wallis;
  • Sir Joseph B. Robinson, 1st Bart. (1840-1929);
  • Robinson sale, Christie’s, 6th July 1923, lot 6, re-purchased by the vendor;
  • Ida Louisa Robinson, Princess Labia (d. 1961), daughter of the above);
  • Count Natale A.D. Labia, son of the above, to 1988;
  • Labia sale, Sotheby's, London, 16th November 1988, lot 60;
  • A. Alfred Taubman, acquired 1988;
  • By descent to 2016.

Exhibitions

  • London, Schomberg House, 1786;
  • London, Royal Academy, The Robinson Collection, 1958, no. 28 (reproduced in the Souvenir, p. 53);
  • Cape Town, National Gallery of South Africa, The Joseph Robinson Collection, 1959 (70); 
  • Zurich, Kunsthaus, Sammlung Sir Joseph Robinson 1840-1929, Werke europäischer Malerei vom 15. bis 19. Jahrhundert, 1962, no. 56.

Literature

  • The Morning Herald, August 11, 1785;
  • The Morning Herald, December 30, 1786; 
  • Sir Walter Armstrong, Gainsborough and his Place in English Art, London, 1898, p. 196;
  • William T. Whitley, Thomas Gainsborough, London, 1915, pp.244-5 and 257;
  • R.R.T. ‘The Robinson Pictures at Christie’s’, The Burlington Magazine, vol.XLIII, July-December, 1923, p.34;
  • Ellis K. Waterhouse, ‘A Preliminary check list of portraits by Thomas Gainsborough’, Walpole Society, 1948-1950, vol. XXXIII, p. 51;
  • Ellis K. Waterhouse, Gainsborough, 1958, p. 71,no. 324.
  • This painting will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the works of Thomas Gainsborough by Hugh Belsey.

Private collection, USA