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Jonathan Richardson

1 of 8 portraits of Jonathan Richardson

© National Portrait Gallery, London

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Jonathan Richardson

by Jonathan Richardson
oil on canvas, circa 1729
29 in. x 24 3/4 in. (737 mm x 629 mm)
Purchased, 1883
Primary Collection
NPG 706

Sitterback to top

  • Jonathan Richardson (1667-1745), Portrait painter. Sitter in 8 portraits, Artist or producer associated with 126 portraits.

Artistback to top

  • Jonathan Richardson (1667-1745), Portrait painter. Artist or producer associated with 126 portraits, Sitter in 8 portraits.

This portraitback to top

Richardson was an habitual self-portraitist. Horace Walpole noted that the ' good old man seems to have amused himself with writing a short poem and drawing his own or his son's portrait every day'. More detailed information on this portrait is available in a National Portrait Gallery collection catalogue, John Kerslake's Early Georgian Portraits (1977, out of print).

Linked publicationsback to top

  • Smartify image discovery app
  • Kerslake, John, Early Georgian Portraits, 1977, p. 228
  • Lowell Libson Ltd., Lowell Libson Ltd: British Art, 2017, p. 11
  • Rideal, Liz, Insights: Self-portraits, 2005, p. 66 Read entry

    Dated October 1735, when Richardson was sixty-eight years old, the black chalk image with white highlights is a candid self-scrutiny. Wigless, he is undressed, presenting his bare and bony bald pate together with the crêpy folds of his neck skin. It is a startlingly different self-perspective to the other three more conventional views. Richardson is recognisable in all the varying media and poses illustrating his propensity to use self-portraiture as a means of flexing his artistic muscles.

  • Saywell, David; Simon, Jacob, Complete Illustrated Catalogue, 2004, p. 520

Events of 1729back to top

Current affairs

Committee of the House of Commons appointed to enquire into the state of Britain's gaols.
Opening of the first Putney Bridge; the only fixed crossing of the River Thames between London Bridge and Kingston Bridge at the time.
Tornado destroys buildings in Sussex and Kent

Art and science

Chiswick House in London, a pioneering example of English Palladian revival architecture, is designed by its owner Richard Boyle with the help of the architect William Kent.
Jonathan Swift publishes A Modest Proposal; a satirical attack on attitudes towards the poor and Irish policy more generally.


International

Benjamin Franklin prints, publishes and largely writes the weekly Pennsylvania Gazette, which soon becomes the most successful newspaper in the colonies.
Treaty of Seville seals peace between Britain and Spain.
King Frederick IV of Denmark charters the Danish East India Company.

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