25th Jul, 2006 0:00
ANTIQUE SALE
855
▲ John Constable (1776-1837)
PORTRAIT OF GEORGE ELMER (d. 1811) 1804
Inscribed on the frame with the artist's name, identification of the istter and the date, oil on canvas, 59.7 x 47.9cm
PROVENANCE: by descent to the sitter's daughter, Mrs writes to her brother: 'Old Mr Elmer, whose picture you painted long ago, died this week - Mrs Lewis is so happy she has it as it is such a likeness of her father'. Constable maintained the connection with the family and painted portraits of Mrs Lewis's two daughters in 1804 and her son, John, in 1807.
Hugh Belsey
Lewis; purchased from her descendants in 1969 by the late Reginald Hodson.
LITERATURE: John Constable's Correspondence, edited by R B Beckett, 6 volumes, Ipswich 1962-68, 1, p 60; L Parris, The Tate Gallery Constable Collection, London 1981, pp 26, 28 note 5; G Reynolds, The Early Paintings and Drawings by John Constable, New Haven and London 1996, Text volume p 56 (04.4), Plate volume plate 228.
John Constable's portraits have often been overlooked. The intensity of his landscapes have made critics shy away from the direct likenesses he painted of his family, their friends and business associates. it was only in 2002 in the famous Paris exhibition that the selector, the contemporary artist Lucien Freud, placed portraits on the same footing as his landscapes and other commentators followed in their appreciation of the humility and honesty of the artist's approach to his subjects.
The portrait of George Elmer, which dates from the period when Constable was finding his personality as an artist, shows a bluff no-nonsense industrialist. His face is etched with determination and he shows some impatience with sitting for such a frivolous thing as a portrait. Elmer and the Constable family were business associates and the portrait was probably painted to foster good relations between the two families. At the time of George Elmer's death in 1811 his son, also called George, entered a partnership to buy the port of Mistley with the local banker and merchant George Bridges. Bridges was another of Constable's sitters and he is shown with his large family in a complex portrait group dating from 1804 that is now exhibited at Tate Britain. A wharf at Mistley, on the Stour estuary some five miles downstream from Flatford Mill (the centre of the Constable's business interests), was used by Golding Constable, the artist's father, for his ships which transported flour to London and returned with coal which he sold locally.
On 16 March 1811, Ann Constable
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Sold for £9,800
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Auction: ANTIQUE SALE, 25th Jul, 2006
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25JUL06 - STANSTED MOUNTFITCHET - TIER
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