David Garrick; Eva Maria Garrick (née Veigel)

1 portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds

David Garrick; Eva Maria Garrick (née Veigel), by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1772-1773 -NPG 5375 - © National Portrait Gallery, London

© National Portrait Gallery, London

Mid-Georgian Portraits Catalogue

David Garrick; Eva Maria Garrick (née Veigel)

by Sir Joshua Reynolds
1772-1773
55 1/4 in. x 66 7/8 in. (1403 mm x 1699 mm)
NPG 5375

This portraitback to top

Garrick appears to have just finished reading to his wife who reflects upon his words; the setting has been described, inevitably, as the Garricks’ villa at Hampton. [1] On 19 November 1772 James Northcote told his brother that Reynolds was ‘painting Mr and Mrs Garrick in one picture’. [2] Reynolds’s pocket books record appointments for David Garrick in 1772 on 29 October and 3, 5 and 6 November; and for his wife on 16, 20, 27 and 29 October and 4 November. In 1773 Mrs Garrick sat on 17 April. Ribeiro has observed that Garrick’s velvet suit was rather old-fashioned by this time; the style (the three garments made of the same fabric) was one favoured in his youth; by contrast Mrs Garrick, who has artificially whitened skin and rouged cheeks, wears the newly fashionable long-sleeved gown. [3]
The figure of Garrick alone was copied on a kit-cat canvas once owned by Sir James Mackintosh, [4] etched by W. Boucher in 1894 as from a painting by Gainsborough [sic] belonging to Mrs Kaye. A reduced copy of NPG 5375 was sold Christie’s, 30 July 1981, lot 256.

Footnotesback to top

1) C. R. Leslie & T. Taylor, Life and Times of Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1865, I, p 436.
2) W. T. Whitley, Artists and their Friends in England 1700-1799, 1928, II, p 293.
3) A. Ribeiro, The Gallery of Fashion, 2000, pp 128-29.
4) A. Graves & W. V. Cronin, A History of the Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, IV, p 1318.

Referenceback to top

Graves & Cronin 1899-1901
A. Graves & W. V. Cronin, A History of the Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, 4 vols., 1899-1901, I, pp 351-52 & IV, p 1318.

Mannings 2000
D. Mannings, Sir Joshua Reynolds, 2 vols., 2000, no.707.

Simon 1997
J. Simon, The Art of the Picture Frame, NPG, 1997, pp 95, 163.

Waterhouse 1941
E. K. Waterhouse, Reynolds, 1941, p 63.

Physical descriptionback to top

Garrick has brown eyes, a grey powdered wig, and wears a red corded velvet suit, the coat and waistcoat with a white lining. Mrs Garrick has blue-grey eyes, and is dressed in white satin.

Provenanceback to top

The Hon Thomas Fitzmaurice paid Reynolds 150 gn. for Mr and Mrs Garrick on 17 January 1775;1 his grandson the 5th Earl of Orkney; his sales Christie’s, 11 May 1860, lot 194, bought in, and Christie’s, 15 June 1861, lot 108, bought W. O. Foster; by descent to the executors of Maj.-Gen. Edward H. Goulburn (d. 1978); Christie’s, 21 November 1980, lot 111, withdrawn; purchased by private treaty 1980.

1 M. Cormack, 'The Ledgers of Sir Joshua Reynolds', Wal. Soc., XLII, 1970, p 152; listed in his collection by E. Malone ed., The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1797, I, p XXXVI.

Exhibitionsback to top

RA 1773 (238); British Institution, 1860 (151); Third and concluding exhibition of National Portraits (fortieth year of the reign of George the third to MDCCCLXVII), South Kensington, 1868 (837); Reynolds, 45 Park Lane, London 1937 (82); Garrick, Johnson and the Lichfield Circle, Lichfield, 1953 (7); Johnson and the Lichfield Circle, Lichfield, 1959 (8); Reynolds, Birmingham, 1961 (55); Treasures from the National Portrait Gallery, NPG exhibition, Fukushima, Nagoya, Kitakyushu Hiroshima, Tokyo, 1995-96 (14).


This extended catalogue entry is from the out-of-print National Portrait Gallery collection catalogue: John Ingamells, National Portrait Gallery: Mid-Georgian Portraits 1760-1790, National Portrait Gallery, 2004, and is as published then. For the most up-to-date details on individual Collection works, we recommend reading the information provided in the Search the Collection results on this website in parallel with this text.

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