Lot 119: POPE, ALEXANDER (1688-1744, poet)

PORTRAIT, AFTER WILLIAM HOARE R.A. OF BATH (1707?-1792), 18TH CENTURY,
oil on canvas, half-length, wearing a dark green coat and cap, 29 x 24 in (73.3 x 61 cm).

The original portrait by Hoare is probably the pastel in the National Portrait Gallery, thought possibly to date from 1739 when both Pope and Hoare were in Bath, the latter having recently returned from nine years spent in Italy.

There were a number of later repetitions in oil, discussed and reproduced by William Wimsatt, The Portraits of Alexander Pope, 1965, where the present version is specifically noted and illustrated: '63.5 Oil painting, by or after William Hoare. Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1963. Mr Woolf Cherrick, of 67 Leinster Road, Rathminer, Dublin, who owned this painting in 1961 and kindly sent the photograph reproduced below. He had bought it about twenty years earlier in Dublin at the auction of a "Mr. Murphy" deceased. In the winter of 1962-3 this picture was for sale by Messrs. Dawsons of Pall, and is described and illustrated in their Catalogue 120: Pot-porri, A Small Collection of Books'. The New York bookseller John Fleming bought the portrait from Dawsons on 19 November 1962. Acquired from Fleming in 1987.

William Hoare's son, Prince Hoare, later recalled that, when sitting for this portrait, Pope showed an anxiety to conceal the deformity of his person from childhood and had a cloak thrown over his shoulders, and that while 'Mr Hoare was painting that part of the picture He came behind Him and said "He need not be very particular about the shoulders."' (David Piper, The Image of the Poet, 1982).

Like Colvin Smith with his portrait of Walter Scott, Hoare himself painted replicas of this work at the demand of various patrons.