Christopher Smart
- Overview
- Extended Catalogue Entry
© National Portrait Gallery, London
Christopher Smart
by Unknown artist
oil on canvas, feigned oval, circa 1745
28 1/2 in. x 23 3/8 in. (724 mm x 594 mm)
Purchased, 1950
Primary Collection
NPG 3780
This portraitback to top
The identity is traditional resting on its family provenance and on comparison with the portrait, generally accepted as representing Smart, at Pembroke College, Cambridge. It may be dated on appearance to c.1745. It is crude in quality and possibly the work of an amateur. 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
- Kerslake, John, Early Georgian Portraits, 1977, p. 251
- Saywell, David; Simon, Jacob, Complete Illustrated Catalogue, 2004, p. 568
Events of 1745back to top
Current affairs
Second Jacobite Rebellion: the Young Pretender, Charles Edward Stuart ('Bonnie Prince Charlie') lands in Scotland and proclaims his father king. Jacobite forces take Edinburgh and march into England as far as Derby but are forced to turn back due to lack of support.The song later to become the British national anthem, God Save the King, is first performed at the Drury Lane Theatre in London in a setting by Thomas Arne.
Art and science
William Hogarth completes the six paintings of Marriage-à-la-Mode, his satirical take on upper-class eighteenth-century society.West towers of Westminster Abbey are completed
Satirical writer Jonathan Swift dies.
International
War of the Austrian Succession: the French army defeat Austrian, Dutch and British forces under the Duke of Cumberland at the Battle of Fontenoy.Madame de Pompadour becomes mistress to Louis XV of France.
Principle of the Leyden jar is discovered by German physicist, Ewald Georg von Kleist.
Artist Giovanni Batista Piranesi publishes the first of his Vedute (Views); a celebrated series of etchings of Rome.
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