"Derby museum and art gallery has appeared on television a few times over the years and recently one of our lesser-known faces had a brush with stardom, in the form of a Culture Show Special on BBC2. Subtitled The Lost Portrait of Bonnie Prince Charlie, the show followed the BBC's Fake or Fortune art detective, Bendor Grosvenor, as he sought to locate and identify a likeness of Prince Charles Edward Stuart by the great 18th century portraitist, Allan Ramsay, during the prince's ill-fated campaign of 1745.
Derby boasts numerous monuments to its involvement in the prince's attempt to seize the crown for his father; from the statue of the prince by the Cathedral to the preserved room in the museum where the decision to turn north was made, leading to Culloden, the last battle fought on British soil. For more than 100 years the city's art gallery has been home to an enigmatic and youthful portrait of Charles, as Bendor discovered, however, fresh research conducted between 2009 and 2011 revealed that all was not as it might have seemed. The painting was deposited at the museum in 1902 and subsequently catalogued with the description ‘Prince Charles Edward Stuart by Allan Ramsay'. It had enjoyed considerable attention but when the museum started planning a new display of portraits from its collection, suspicions were raised. There was little doubt that this was a mid-18th century painting but the picture's attribution to Allan Ramsay was less clear. In addition, the sitter's red, military style coat, and the inclusion of a black, rather than white, Stuart ribbon cockade in his hat, triggered questions about the sitter's identity.
With recourse to experts in military uniform, we discovered that in fact we had a portrait of a British cavalry officer and with the discovery of an identical portrait by Thomas Hudson (1701-1779), we identified the sitter as Edward Walpole (1737-1771), the grandson of the British Prime Minister Robert Walpole…"
Full article here
link
Amicalement
Armand
paints brigs for the British fleet.
