17th Century Portrait Painting of a Man Attributed to an Artist In the Circle of Cornelius Johnson, Framed

Description

Attributed to an artist in the circle of Cornelius Johnson, considered to be “the most important native English portraitist of … more Attributed to an artist in the circle of Cornelius Johnson, considered to be “the most important native English portraitist of the early 17th century” (Encyclopaedia Britannica), the 1620s portrait being offered by Irwin & Lane depicts a mustachioed Jacobean courtier, merchant, or member of the gentry. His hair is shoulder length, and he is wearing fashionable black-on-black clothes and a light-colored ruff of a briefly popular style known as a falling band. Despite the legend hand-painted on the reverse of the canvas, the subject is not Sir George Calvert, Lord Baltimore — he bears no resemblance to that Maryland pioneer — though it may have been exhibited as such at one point in Baltimore. The stretcher bears the chalked name , in script, EVA WEMYSS. This could mean Lady Eva Wemyss (died 1948), a British philanthropist, suffragette, and art collector, who was the second wife of Reginald, Laird of Wemyss, and a daughter of the second Earl Cowley. Apparently cut from its original frame under unknown circumstances and glued to a later lining, the portrait has been professionally restored, removed from the intermediate canvas, attached to a new canvas, and remounted; all earlier materials have been retained for conservation and research purposes. The vintage frame has been painted black to emulate Dutch frames of the period that the painting was executed. less