#my attribution

[thebaroquehuman]

So a while ago, (let's say two years) I was browsing through my Facebook feed, I follow quite a lot of museum pages and among them is that of the Museum of San Carlos (in Mexico), and lo and behold they post a portrait apparently by the famed Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun.

Portrait of a Lady, 1795 - Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun?

Before even looking at the attribution I had already thought the style of the portrait reminded me of something. Seeing no particular reason to disagree with the attribution to Vigée Le Brun, I assumed I was probably being reminded of her artworks and moved on.

A while later... last year? I started to get interested in the work of late 18th century German portraitist Johann Friedrich August Tischbein, while browsing through artworks by him I started noticing that he had a .....type let's call it, bust portraits of women with direct gaze turned three quarters with a mainly white dress and a slight backwards head tilt.

1795 Henriette Gräfin von Egloffstein - Johann Friedrich August Tischbein.

Nothing particularly odd about it, white dresses were very popular in the late 18th century, three quarters is a very popular pose in portraiture, and if the head isn't set completely straight you've got to tilt it somewhere, but the conjunction of all characteristics together does create a sort of defined "look" in his portraits. Even the portraits which weren't busts often show the slight tilt.

1796 Self-portrait with family - Johann Friedrich August Tischbein.

Anyway going back to our supposed Vigée Le Brun, there was something about it that never quite convinced me (or maybe I'm just misremembering with the benefit of hindsight), the facial features looked off when comparing it to more famous Vigée Le Brun's, I had never seen hair texture quite like that on her portraits and even the clothes had started to look weird to me.

1782 Marie Joséphine of Savoy (switched to the right for easier comparison) - Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun

The texture of the hair in the portrait above is specially dissimilar due to different fashion styles in the 1780s and the 1790s, but I wanted to compare similar looking portraits, I'll later show how Vigée Le Brun depicted hair in the 1790s.

And one day purely by chance I started looking at my Vigée Le Brun pinterest board, just after I had looked at the Tischbein board. And I started noticing some pretty obvious (in my opinion) commonalities.

I have already spoken about the pose, but again poses similar to it are not rare by a longshot in portraiture history.

So let's talk about hair.

Portraits by Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun

It was hard to find Vigée Le Brun portraits from the middle of the 1790s as she tended to adorn the hairstyles in her portraits with ribbons, flowers and turbans that covered most of the hair, so we have two from the beginning of the decade, and you can see that instead of the loose clouds characteristic of the San Carlos portrait we have very defined curls.

And in a portrait of 1796, the hairstyle though looser shows still clearly defined strands of hair

In contrast portraits from the 1790s by Tischbein consistently depict hairstyles the same way as the San Carlos portrait

Also in this collage I think it's also easy to see the similarities in pose and shadowing.

To drive the point home here is a bigger collage also showing portraits by Vigée Le Brun. *Some portraits rotated for ease of comparison.

[thebaroquehuman]

This is probably not the reason you're following this blog in the first place, nor am I an art historian or anything resembling it, and I'm probably being a bit full of myself by going against an auction house funded in 1850s. Either way I have to say something but like take anything I say with a grain of salt.

In 2023, canadian auction house Waddington's sold a portrait apparently by François-Hubert Drouais and I say apparently, not because the auction house gave any sign of the attribution being doubtful but because the portrait did not look not just like any François-Hubert Drouais, but also not like any 18th century French portrait I've ever seen.

Waddington's portrait.

Closest François-Hubert Drouais I could find.

Back in early 2024, when I first found the Waddington's portrait, I thought it reminded me of something, and since it looked somewhat italian, I decided I was probably being reminded of Giuseppe Bonito.

A portrait by Giuseppe Bonito.

A while ago I had downloaded a PDF regarding a series of portraits of the Serra family by Carlo Amalfi, the PDF had been completely forgotten by the time I found the Waddington's portrait, but about half a year ago I started going through my PDFs and once I had extracted the pictures of the Amalfi portraits I thought they looked somewhat familiar, going through my saved pictures the Waddington's portrait just jumped at me and I decided right then it had to be an Amalfi.

Now I won't pretend to be an expert in 18th century portraiture, but I do have eyes and possibly you do too. I leave you with this side by side, and maybe you'll reach the same conclusion I did.

Side by side comparison of an Amalfi and our Waddington's.

Drouais, Waddington's, Bonito.

Three faces by Amalfi, the Waddington's, two by Drouais.

Three hands by Amalfi, the two of our Waddington's (the fourth holding a pink drapery, the fifth resting on a surface), four by Drouais. With the third (by Amalfi) and fourth looking almost identical.

Neck and chest details including lace, by Amalfi (initial three), the Waddington's, and by Drouais (last two).

To me the prominent chiaroscuro found in both Amalfi and the Waddington's, the smooth finnish so prominent in Drouais, and the different ways of portraying both lace and facial features make very clear that the Waddington's is very much an Amalfi and not at all resembles a Drouais.

With all that said I leave it to your own conclusions.

[thebaroquehuman]

New Attribution!!!! .....by some idiot on the internet (me).

Portrait of the Honorable Horatio Townshend CIRCLE OF ALLAN RAMSAY (According to Christie's)

An ACTUAL Allan Ramsay - 1743 Katherine Hall of Dunglass

At first glance not that dissimilar right? And let's remember it's just circle of Allan Ramsay, which just means an artist that lived in the same era and had a similar style but also one that was highly influenced by him.

So let's do a comparison

I know they're mostly women, it's just hard to find male front-facing Ramsay's, but either way again not too dissimilar, but we do find commonalities between the confirmed Ramsay's that we just don't see in the portrait of Horatio (the corners of the mouth are much more defined in Horatio, while the hairstrands are clearer in the Ramsay's, the area of the chin in all of the Ramsay's is more harshly delineated, and in general the shadows in the face of Horatio are much more prominent).

Now let's look at my suggestion

Now this one is a little wild, as I have no idea of how Horatio would end up in Switzerland, but I suggest Johan Rudolf Huber (swiss portraitist mainly active in Bern).

First of all his subjects tend to have a very characteristic head tilt also found in Horatio

1710 - Portrait of a Lady and 1730 - Portrait of a Lady both by Huber

He also commonly uses a strongly delineated downward curve either thin or thick under the mount to represent the beginning of the chin, a feature we can also see in the portrait of Horatio, and that is completely lacking in the Ramsay portraits which instead use a difuse shadowed area. The corners of the mount are also very prominent and strongly shadowed in both the Huber's and the Horatio

We also in see in both the Huber's and the Horatio a dark spot on the center of the chin, though certainly that found on Horatio is much more prominent.

[thebaroquehuman]

This one is not actually my own attribution but I felt I had to share the opinion of an user of a site I used to frequent a while ago (Art Detective, super fun place, hope Art UK relaunches it), first because I highly agree with him, second I feel like I've found even better comparison pictures, and third it doesn't seem like many people have heard his opinion (and they need to!).

So I'll share it with the three people who'll (hopefully) read this.

The way Art Detective works is that someone will post about a picture from the Art UK website (official website for digital images of the UK's public art collections) looking for more information, this can be anything: date, artist, subject, provenance; and then the public (users of Art Detective) will offer opinions, once sort of a public concensus has been reached the manager of the site will decide if there is enough evidence and reach the museum that holds the specific work of art to see if they agree with the new .... anything (date, artist, subject, provenance, etc.).

On the 13th of September of 2016 a picture was posted to the site with the heading "Did Francis Cotes (1726–1770) paint this unidentified lady?"

The Lady in question.

The Cotes attribution was quickly abandoned, with people noting the seemingly earlier looking dress (1720s-30s as opposed to the decades when Cotes worked, 1760s-70s).

Attributions to Thomas Hudson, Joseph Highmore and George Knapton were proposed and soon abandoned due to differences in style.

Respectively Cotes, Hudson, Highmore, Knapton.

The discussion petered off and in 2023, when people were already suggesting its closure (and I believe around the time when Art Detective itself stopped working), a user by the name of Louis Musgrove made the suggestion of John Wollaston (British artist mainly known for his work on the colonies (US)).

Picture used by the user to illustrate the similarities "our sitter has a unusual smile and funny rings around the eyes.... This ladies dress is very similar in construction to our sitter. And the thick lines under the eyes. Just a thought "

Composite image

The suggestion was mostly ignored by the community (including, I admit, me) who instead focused on affirming that it was part of the British school (some users had suggested a French origin), and with that the discussion ended.

Link to orginal discussion: https://www.artuk.org/artdetective/discussions/discussions/did-francis-cotes-17261770-paint-this-unidentified-lady/group/portraits-british-18th-c

Myself, I was not particularly won over by the suggestion. Years later (2025) I decided for completely unrelated reasons to take a look at the work of John Wollaston. And I found this.

1749 Lucy Parry, wife of Admiral Parry

Composite.

Similar round faces with cow eyes and hieratic smiles, similar scoop necklines with separated breasts.

Similar hands and fingers, both resting on a surface!!!, similar depiction of lace.

Similar depiction of clothing folds.

Also Lucy's portrait (the Wollaston which more closely resembles our portrait) was painted before Wollaston left for the colonies, and it would make total sense for a portrait that was painted on Britain (as is most likely for a portrait in a British collection) to look more similar to other portraits from the British period of our painter.

It didn't immediately click, but once I had (again for completely unrelated reasons) taken another look at the whole discussion, the resemblance seemed unmistakable.

So I leave you here, much as Louis Musgrove said "just a suggestion". But if you do agree with Mr. Musgrove, be sure to make your agreement know to the authorities at Art Detective (if and when they come back obviously).

[thebaroquehuman]

On the many odd Jean-Marc Nattier paintings you may find on minor auction sites.

Much like many other french portraitists of the 18th century, Jean-Marc Nattier has sort of become a wastebasket taxon (to borrow the taxonomy term) for any 18th century portrait an auctioneer may be having trouble placing. This has lead to all sorts of portraits, be they french or not, named as "attributed to Jean-Marc Nattier", irrespective of how close (or far) the style of the artwork is to that of Nattier.

In that vein I present to you this lovely portrait of a Lady, auctioned in 2014 by Link Auction Galleries, with of course the prerequisite attribution "Attributed To Jean Marc Nattier, French", god forbid we have an anonymous portrait.

For those of you who are not familiar with the work of Jean-Marc Nattier, here's a small selection of his ouvre.

Of course for people not familiar with 18th century portraits that may not really mean anything.

Let's take a closer look

Immediately I think it's easy to see that the three portraits on the right side, share an extremely smooth finish and a predominance of pastel colors. Features not found on the portrait on the left, which is characterized by a more sketchy finish, a stronger delineation of the oval of the face and the use of high contrast coloring for the face

And since I think differences are better perceived through contrast, let's contrast with the following collage with artworks by Antoine Pesne.

In the three portraits by Antoine Pesne on the roght, in my opinion we see not only the bold colouring and somewhat less smoother finish, but also similarly drawn noses and mouths.

For the sake of fairness I have also included a similar collage with the works of Jean-Marc Nattier.

We also find somewhat similar looking hairstyles to that of the Link Auction portrait in other works by Antoine Pesne (ignore the middle portrait).

And though the ouvre of Jean-Marc Nattier also contains not dissimilar hairstyles, there still are differences in the way Nattier portrait facial features.

Presently I think it's much more likely for the authorship of the present portrait to found in Antoine Pesne or someone in his circle.

*some images may have been switched in orientation for easier comparison