Early Georgian Portraits Catalogue: Vanderbank

John Vanderbank (1694?-1739)

Portrait painter; son of Peter Vanderbank; born in England; illustrated Don Quixote,1738; painted Sir Isaac Newton.

3647 Self-portrait, 1738
Pen and brown ink on white paper, 12 ¾ x 7 ½ in. (324 x 191 mm), laid down on modern paper; hair and shoulders sketched in outline; suggestion of a centre parting.

Signed below the shoulders in a bold script Jn° V. 1738.

The identification of the subject of this drawing is based on comparison with a similar drawing once in the collection of Joseph Vanhaecken (Lugt 2516) and now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, which is inscribed in ink, Vandrebanc his own portrait.

Condition:small tear at upper edge; a dark circular spot in the shoulder, another in the background to the left of the mouth.

Collections:bought, 1948, from Colnaghi's, the purchaser of the album of Vanderbank pen and ink studies at Sotheby's, 27 October 1948, lot 54, from the collection of Captain J.H.B. Brain; earlier history unknown.

Exhibited:'British Self-Portraits', Arts Council, 1962 (17).

Literature:F. Lugt, Les Marques de Collections,Amsterdam, 1921, 1956.

Iconography

Other likenesses of Vanderbank have not been traced, though Vertue noted in 1723 that Vanderbank had done 'two or three' self-portraits. A painting called a self-portrait of Vanderbank, from the collection of H.N. Pym, was sold at Christie's, 22 November 1912, lot 39. Vanderbank figures indistinguishably in the anonymous portrait group, 'An Assembly of Artists' (c.1730), in the Ashmolean Museum.