Description

Oil on canvas in period carved giltwood frame.
The frame bears the attribution 'Sir G. Kneller' although this is more likely a work by Michael Dahl.
The unknown sitter, an attractive young woman, looks our at the viewer with an aristocratic hauteur.

This is the age of the 'Augustan' portrait (1690-1744) when the sitter expected to be 'elevated'...an expression of gravitas behind which was culture and intelligence. This was the English way...not for them the smiling, sometimes simpering, expressions painted by the French.
Joseph Addison, famous essayist, poet, playwright and politician and a man of letters sneeringly described French portraits as "very remarkable for their smiles and a certain smirking Air...bestowed indifferently on every Age and Degree of either sex. The Toujours Gai appeared even in Judges, Bishops and Privy Counsellors...every part of the Dress was in a Flutter, and endeavoured to distinguish itself above the rest."
MICHAEL DAHL (1659 - 1743).
Dahl was a painter of exceptional talent and regarded as the only really serious rival to Sir Godfrey Kneller, for royal patronage, during the years 1690-1714. Dahl's patterns were undoubtedly indebted to the fashion set by Kneller, but Dahl had a lighter palette, his brushwork applied in shorter and more careful strokes.
His self portrait hangs in the National Portrait Gallery and he is famed for having painted a series of wonderful female portraits for the Duke of Somerset, now at Petworth House, and known as the Petworth Beauties.
Dahl's portraits of members of the royal family hang at Kensington Palace and Windsor and other examples of his work can be found at the Tate and National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
Our thanks to James Mulraine, art historian.
SIZE: 37 x 32 inches inc. frame.
PROVENANCE: Sussex Private Collection.
Internal Ref: 8677