Lot 1311: Attributed to Sir Robert Ker Porter (1777-1842)

Attributed to Sir Robert Ker Porter (1777-1842) "Durham Cathedral" Inscribed with the title and the artist's name on a plaque attached to the frame, together with various details on the artist and provenance on labels verso, oil on canvas, 42cm by 68.5cm Provenance: With T Rushworth and Son, Sadler Street, Durham British painter, writer and diplomat, moved to Edinburgh in 1780, where he knew the young Walter Scott and the Jacobite heroine Flora Macdonald. A battle painting owned by Macdonald inspired him to become a painter of battle scenes. In 1790 his mother took him to London to see Benjamin West, President of the Royal Academy, who arranged for him to be admitted to the Royal Academy Schools. He made rapid progress and in 1792 was awarded a silver palette by the Royal Society of Arts for his drawing the Witches of Endor (untraced). The following year he was commissioned to paint an altarpiece for Shoreditch Church in London. On a visit to Durham he painted his only known landscape, View of Durham (untraced), which he exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1797. By 1799 the whole family was resident in Joshua Reynolds's old house in London.