- Museum number
- 1852,0214.375
- Description
-
Portrait of Grinling Gibbons, wood carver; head and shoulders, half-right, head nearly to front, eyes slightly to left, wearing long curling hair or wig, cravat and a cloak draped over his shoulder
Red and black chalk, heightened with white, on buff paper
Verso: Study of a pair of legs
Red chalk
- Production date
- 1659-1710
- Dimensions
-
Height: 227 millimetres
-
Width: 172 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Stainton & White 1987
As an ad vivum portrait of the celebrated wood-carver and sculptor this drawing is of particular interest. It can probably be dated about 1686-8, when Medina was working in London: Gibbons would have been in his late thirties. He was painted by Kneller about 1690 (Hermitage, Leningrad) and, with his wife Elizabeth, by John Closterman, perhaps a little later. A contemporary description of Gibbons comes from the diarist John Evelyn, who claimed to have "discovered" "that incomparable young man" in 1671, working on a large copy in wood-relief of Tintoretto's 'Crucifixion'. Recalling their first meeting he noted: "I found he was likewise Musical, & very Civil, sober & discreete in his discourse".
This drawing belonged to George Vertue (1684-1756), the first historian of the arts in England, and then to Horace Walpole (1717-97), whose 'Anecdotes of Painting, Engraving, Architecture &c &c in England' (1765-71) were based on Vertue's notebooks.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1974 July-Dec, BM, Portrait Drawings, no.149
1980 Sep-Dec, Twickenham, Orleans House Gallery, Horace Walpole & Strawberry Hill
1987 June-Aug, BM, 'Hilliard to Hogarth' no. 166
1987 Sep-Nov, New Haven, YCBA, Hilliard to Hogarth no. 166
1988/9 Oct-Jan, London, V&A, Grinling Gibbons
2009/10 Oct-Jan, New Haven, YCBA, Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill
2010 Mar-July, London, V&A, Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill
- Acquisition date
- 1852
- Acquisition notes
- This drawing originally formed part of the two volumes of 'Portraits of English painters collected by Mr Vertue and Mr Walpole', lot 1270 in the sale of the Strawberry Hill collection, London 13 June 1842: see Print Quarterly, December 2000
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1852,0214.375