- Museum number
- 1868,0328.311
- Description
-
Self-portrait of the artist; half-length seated in a chair to right, looking slightly to left, his left hand held to cheek. 1829
Brush drawing in brown wash, over graphite
- Production date
- 1829
- Dimensions
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Height: 180 millimetres
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Width: 142 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
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- Curator's comments
- The following text is from S. Lloyd and K. Sloan, 'The Intimate Portrait' (exh. SNPG & BM, 2008-9), cat. no. 70:
In 1816, when John Scarlett Davis received his silver palette from the Society of Arts at the age of eleven, for a copy of an anatomical drawing, he was declared by the ‘Hereford Journal’ to be 'a young self-taught genius'. He may later have been a pupil of David Cox then based in Hereford but he left for London in 1818 and entered the RA Schools in 1820. He exhibited at the RA from 1822, mostly oil paintings, and his income derived mainly from portraits, about which he wrote in 1829: 'it is much more profitable than any other subject of painting, although there are many other branches of printing I should prefer' (cited Finberg, p. 152). His modern reputation is as a watercolourist and successor of Richard Parkes Bonington. Like Bonington, Davis made small watercolour copies of paintings and from the 1830s many of his watercolours were of church, gallery and palace interiors.
From 1824-26, Lawrence and others employed him to make pencil copies of various paintings and portraits in order to have them engraved and they introduced him to several clients for portraits. This self-portrait drawing dates from about this time when he was beginning to the small watercolour copies of paintings; shortly afterwards he began to turn from portraiture to interiors and landscapes. Its contemplative pose, hand to cheek, is also slightly melancholic; the self-portrait is sketched in brown wash and relies on chiaroscuro for effect and the intensity of the gaze, providing a characteristically Romantic impression of the mind and character of the artist, rather than a detailed physical description.
Walker suggested that it might have been a study for an oil of about 1830 in the Leominster Museum but they are not really similar. In the oil Davis holds a palette and brush and looks directly at the sitter. It does not have the reflective quality of the British Museum's drawing which, with its chiaroscuro and fading around the edges, looks much more like the preparation for a print, although no prints from it are known. Davis was also an engraver and made a mezzotint after a Lawrence portrait in 1829 and also lithographed a series of heads after Rubens about this time. A bust length pencil and wash sketch of the previous year in the NPG which also employs this less direct gaze is thought to be a sketch for a self-portrait exhibited in Leeds in 1828 but now lost. There is an additional pencil self-portrait from c.1825 in Leominster Museum.
Davis died of 'diseased lungs' in 1845. Patrick Conner has noted that although Redgrave's Dictionary states he 'became drunken and of demoralized habits, got into prison and died before the age of 30', this is a characterization at odds with his papers which 'indicate a man settled in his domestic life and dedicated to his art.'
KS
SELECTED LITERATURE: LB 1; H.F. Finberg, ‘Scarlett Davis as a Portrait Painter’, Apollo no. 100, 1933, pp.150-2; R. Walker, ‘NPG: Regency Portraits’, 1985; G. Watkin Williams, ‘Life and Work of John Scarlett Davis’, Old Water Colour Society’s Club, 1970, pp.8-28; ‘John Davis’, Hereford City Museum and Art Gallery, 1995, no. 60; P.Conner, ‘John Scarlett Davis’ Oxford DNB; T. Hobbs, ‘John Scarlett Davis’, 2004
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1995 June-Jul, Hereford Museum, 'John Davis' no. 60
2008/9 Oct-Jan, Edinburgh, SNPG, 'The Intimate Portrait', no. 70
2009 Mar-May, London, BM, Room 90, 'The Intimate Portrait', no.70
- Acquisition date
- 1868
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1868,0328.311