Early Georgian Portraits Catalogue: Taylor
Brook Taylor (1685-1731)
Mathematician; corresponded with John Keill and sent a solution of the problem involved in Kepler's second law of planetary motion to John Machin, 1712; FRS, 1712, and first secretary, 1714; LLD St John's College, Cambridge, 1714; published solution of the problem of the centre of oscillation, 1714 (obtained in 1708); published his Methodus Incrementorum Directa et Inversa,1715 (the first treatise dealing with the calculus of finite differences), containing 'Taylor's Theorem',and other original solutions and formulas; Linear Perspective, 1715, New Principles of Linear Perspective,1719, and other works. Taylor married 1721 (1) Miss Brydges (d.s.p. 1723) and (2) in 1729 Sabetta Sawbridge (d.1730) whose daughter Elizabeth married Sir William Young, Bart.
1920 By Louis Goupy(?)
Gouache on vellum on card, 3 7/8 x 3 1/32 in. (98.5 x 77 mm); blue eyes, brown eyebrows, pale complexion; wine coloured cap with gold trimming and tassel, white shirt, blue and white striped dressing gown, lined with red; brown bound books in bookcase, one inscribed Linear / Perspec,another with an illegible inscription, open book also inscribed Linear Perspective; grey-green wall and drapery in background.
At the time of acquisition the portrait was inscribed on the frame: Brook Taylor. LL.D / L. Goupy. Del. 1720. There was also on the backing paper the trade label of Edmd. Orme, printseller, of 59 New Bond Street (who may perhaps have framed it).
The attribution given on the frame has been generally accepted but Long [1] prefers to give NPG 1920 to Joseph (died before 1782), nephew of Louis Goupy (d.1747) who was a friend of Taylor's and dedicated two engravings to him;[2] no works by Joseph however have so far been identified.
Condition:good, slight flaking at edges.
Collections:bought, 1921, from Danton Guérault of Great Portland Street, who said that he had acquired it from a descendant of the sitter in Brighton.
Literature:C.R. Grundy, 'Documents relating to an action brought against Joseph Goupy in 1738', Walpole Society,IX, 1921, pp.77-87; D. Foskett, A Dictionary of British Miniature Painters,1972.
Iconography
Taylor was portrayed as a boy, c.1700 in a large group, 'The Children of John Taylor of Bifrons', attributed to Closterman, which was formerly at Bifrons, near Canterbury, and more recently (1933) in the collection of E.C. Trench of Great Bedwyn, Wilts. [Editor's note, 2014: now in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery.]
The only single type, other than NPG 1920, is the portrait by an unknown artist, which belonged to the sitter's daughter and was engraved by Earlom as the frontispiece to Taylor's Contemplatio Philosophica,1793. It was probably painted c.1715, judging from the costume, and was presented in 1807 to the Royal Society by his grandson, Sir William Young, 2nd Bart.