ALLAN RAMSAY (SCOTTISH 1713-1784)
HALF-LENGTH PORTRAIT OF KEITH URQUHART
£17,000
Scottish Paintings & Sculpture
Auction: 6 December 2018 at 18:00 GMT
Description
Signed and dated 1752, feigned oval, oil on canvas
Dimensions
76cm x 63cm (30in x 25in)
Footnote
Provenance:By family descent
Exhibited:Aberdeen Art Gallery, Paintings from North-East Homes 1951, no.113
Literature:Alastair Smart, Allan Ramsay 1999, p.191, ill. 424
Note:On 10 March 1753 Ramsay's father signed in Edinburgh a receipt for six guineas 'from Mr Urquhart by the hands of Mr Gordon as the second payment of his picture done by my son,' SNPG archives
Note: Ramsay is synonymous with the imagery of the Enlightenment, and was the portraitist of choice of the notable figures of the day, from King George III to the Young Pretender. Born into genteel and artistic circles, he went on to receive a fine and extensive arts education; first studying in London under the Swedish painter Hans Hysing, and later spending three years in Rome and Naples, working under Francesco Solimena and Imperiali (Francesco Fernandi). His friend, the writer Samuel Johnson, warmly commented, 'I love Ramsay. You will not find a man in whose conversation there is more instruction, more information, and more elegance, than in Ramsay's'. Cultured, good company, and refreshingly modern in his approach to portraiture, he soon become Society's artist of choice with few to rival the sharp ascent of his career. By the 1750s, from which this fine portrait dates, he was indisputably regarded as Britain's greatest portraiture painter.
Painted, as we have seen, at the top of his career, this work typifies the many elements which drew the admiration of his peers. Naturalistic and lacking in the stiffness and over-formality which had traditionally characterised British portraiture, Ramsay is as focused on conveying a likeness of his sitter's personality as he is their physical countenance. The subject Keith Urquhart, a young man of twenty two years of age at the time of the sitting, displays signs of a growing maturity in his bearing and possesses an intelligent light in his eye, yet Ramsay has also chosen to note a lingering youthful dreaminess to his sitter's features.
Keith Urquhart was the fourth son of William Urquhart of Meldrum. Succeeding his father as 5th Laird in 1775, Urquhart went on to hold the office of Sheriff of Banffshire. He was married in 1753 to Lady Jean Duff, but it was an unhappy union and she left him in 1760 after the birth of their sixth child, only to die in obscurity in London several years later. His daughters entered into the care of their aunt, Lady Anne Duff of Hatton where, by descent, this portrait has remained until now.