Beschreibung:

After Thomas Gainsborough RA (1727-1788) Portrait of Lord Frederick Campbell (1729-1816), half length, in a feigned oval Oil on canvas, 66cm by 62.5cm Christies stencil to reverse: IS0RW The sitter was Lord Chief Registrar of Scotland, 1768-1816 Member of Parliament, Glasgow, 1761-1780 Member of Parliament, Argyllshire, 1780-1799 A biography of the sitter can be found in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Literature: "Thomas Gainsborough: The Portraits, Fancy Pictures and Copies after Old Masters", New Haven and London 2019, p.144, no. 144h The original portrait was a full length portrait commissioned in 1785 by the sitter's brother, John, 5th Duke of Argyll and it hung at Inverarey Castle until it was destroyed in a fire on 5 November 1975. The literature (as referenced above) lists ten copies of the original. Some are preparatory drawings for an enamel by Henry Bone that is now in the Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Mass (92003.78) others are head and shoulder copies as shown here. One of the recorded copies held in the Drummond Collection at Cadland, Hampshire was engraved and probably painted by Gainsborough Dupont, although confusingly it bears the date 1769, which may actually record the date of the sitters marriage. It is assumed that the present work is a copy taken from Dupont's Cadland canvas that was first recorded at Inverarey in 1817. Sold together with a cache of letters & documents relating to the picture. We are grateful to Hugh Belsey for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.