Description:
Framed (original) half-length pastel portrait of a boy wearing a blue coat and white cravat and shirt, which is signed "Guls. Bellers Pinxit 1748." According to Neil Jeffares, author of an online article in the "Dictionary of patellists before 1800," the work is by William Bellers (fl.1734-1773) who signed his work with the abbreviated Latin form of his name. William Bellers was a portrait painter and draughtsman in crayons whose first recorded signature is portrait of a young man (probably a self-portrait) dated 1733 in the collection of the British Museum (reg. number 1908.0511.2). Bellers matriculated as a non-academic member of the university on 19th April 1734 at Oxford 1734 as 'Gulielmus Bellers Illuminator, priviligatus," the first epithet doubtless referring to his profession as a limner or painter, and the second to his having certain rights, as a 'privileged person'. He was advertised in the "London Evening Post," No. 1142, for 18-20:iii:1735, as 'Mr. Bellers, Face-painter, at Oxford," as among those from whom the stock of prints left by Simon Gribelin could be obtained. Bellers worked in London in the second half of the18th century, and was a frequent contributor of landscapes and topographical views in watercolours and crayons, many of them in Lake District and Northumberland, to the exhibitions of the Free Society of Artists between the years 1761 and 1773, and who published several prints after his works by well-known engravers of the time, such as Chatelain and Ravenet..
Tags:
portraits; male Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2038 |
