drawing
- Museum number
- 1854,0628.18
- Description
-
Portrait of Peter Vandrebanc (Vanderbank), engraver; bust, head slightly to left, eyes to front, with long curling hair
Black chalk, heightened with white, on brown paper
- Production date
- 1695-1697
- Dimensions
-
Height: 393 millimetres
-
Width: 270 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Edward Edwards in his 'Anecdotes of Painters', called this a study for a portrait of Admiral Smith by Richard Wilson, which identification and attribution was also used by LB.
Stainton & White 1987
Although believed since at least the early years of the nineteenth century to be a drawing of Admiral Smith by Richard Wilson, this drawing is in fact a study by Kneller of the engraver Peter Vanderbank (correctly spelt Vandrebanc - see the comments in the biographical entry on this artist). Brinsley Ford doubted the attribution to Wilson (op.cit., p. 15), and W. G. Constable pointed out that the so-called signature was dubious. Douglas Stewart has shown (op.cit., 1971) that Kneller must have made the drawing for a portrait of Vanderbank now known only through the mezzotint by George White (Chaloner Smith 50): the painter is not identified in any of the known states of the print, but Stewart is clearly correct in stating that it was Kneller.
Vanderbank, an engraver, was born in Paris, and was a pupil of Francois Poilly (1622-93). He is said to have moved to London in about 1674, and he engraved many of Kneller's portraits. Vertue recorded that he died in poverty, his widow being forced to sell his engraved plates and their sons to go to sea "or shifted about being not otherwise provided for". He noted that Vanderbank's portrait by Kneller (presumably that for which this drawing was the study) was in 1743 in the possession of Mrs Vanderbank's sister-in-law (v, p. 19).
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1987 June-Aug, BM Hilliard to Hogarth no.143
1987 Sept-Nov, New Haven, Hilliard to Hogarth
- Acquisition date
- 1854
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1854,0628.18
