
Thomas Seaman
Specialist, Head of Sale
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Sold for £3,562.50 inc. premium
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Specialist, Head of Sale
In 1843, Watts achieved renown by winning one of three top prizes in the Fine Arts Commission (headed by Prince Albert) competition for large scale historical paintings to decorate the new Palace of Westminster. Prize money for his cartoon Caractacus Led in Triumph through the Streets of Rome enabled Watts to travel to Paris and down to Italy to study fresco. Here he became artist in residence to the British minister in Florence, Lord Holland, who arranged grand portrait commissions and encouraged Watts to build up a collection of leading figures of the day for the future National Portrait Gallery. The present picture, of which there is a drawing at Watts Gallery, is similar in construction to the group portrait The Ionides Family (c.1840, Victoria & Albert Museum), Watts painted for his first patron, the Greek merchant Alexander Ionides and whose family portraits he continued to paint throughout his career.
We are grateful to Veronica Franklin Gould for her assistance in cataloguing this lot.