X. L’Embarquement pour Cythère
Whereabouts unknown
Oil on canvas
81 x 116 cm
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ferré, Watteau (1972) cat. P25.
REMARKS
While classified by Ferré among pastiches after Watteau, this picture is not a pastiche but, rather, an independent work, and despite the fanciful title of an Embarkation to Cythera, this is undoubtedly a group portrait. The painting is not French but English, and recalls such pictures as Bartholomew Dandrige’s portrait of Uvedale Tomkyns Price and his family. In both generously sized canvases, the fashionably attired characters attempt to be graceful but are stiffly posed. If this work is not by Price himself, then it is probably by someone in his circle, painting in the 1730s.