Lot 245: Follower of Sir Peter Lely

Follower of Sir Peter Lely
Portrait of Richard Gibson (1605/1615?-1690), full-length, in a fur-trimmed silk doublet and pantaloons, white stock and boots, holding a flint-lock musket, with a hound, in a wooded landscape with classical ruins
oil on canvas
64¼ x 42½ in. (163.2 x 108 cm.)
bearing a wax seal with the monogram 'TM' surmounted by the covered crown of a Continental prince; and another with the Cyrillic initials 'I.Yu' set as the charge to a coat-of-arms (on the reverse)

Tempests of Tong Hall, Tong Hall, West Yorkshire, and by inheritance to Viscounts Mountgarret, and by descent.

Property from the 16th Viscount Mountgarrett Will Chattels Trust (Lots 161, 162, 163, 176, 243 and 244)

Richard Gibson was a celebrated dwarf and miniature painter at the Court of Charles I. The second-century Roman marble to which he gestures in the lower left of the composition is an identifiable frieze or entablature, of the type found in Asia Minor, that was in the collection of the Earl of Arundel. It features equally prominently in van Dyck's The Continence of Scipio (Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford). In 1972, it was discovered on the site of Arundel House and is now in the Museum of London, on loan from the Duke of Norfolk.

The late Sir Oliver Millar believed this portrait to be an early copy after a lost picture by Sir Peter Lely.