Completed Portraits: British 19th C 11 Is this a portrait of Oscar Wilde?

Woman in Uniform
Topic: Subject or sitter

It is related to this oil on glass ‘Portrait of a Man’ by an unknown artist in the collection of Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens. https://bit.ly/2WIZVU1

See also:
Roger John Chattaway's portrait of Oscar Wilde
https://bit.ly/2sYCYhM

‘Oscar Wilde in America’: pictures of Oscar Wilde https://bit.ly/MfVL1a

Could the artist who painted the Sunderland picture be responsible for these other paintings on glass in public collections, of Garibaldi and Lord Palmerston?

Southampton City Museums.
https://bit.ly/2t4oMnr
The Stirling Smith Art Gallery & Museum.
https://bit.ly/2S1x2nf

Glasgow Museums Resource Centre (GMRC)
https://bit.ly/2BgPZbk

Glasgow Museums Resource Centre (GMRC)
https://bit.ly/2UC57av

Martin Hopkinson, Entry reviewed by Art UK

Completed, Outcome

This discussion is now closed. The figure depicted is Edward VII when he was Prince of Wales, and the date probably the early 1860s. See also this previous discussion for related paintings on glass in other public collections. https://bit.ly/2De3AjE

Thank you to everyone who participated in this discussion. To those viewing it for the first time, please see below for all the comments that led to this conclusion.

10 comments

Martin Hopkinson,

This seems to be by the same artist or firm whose work has appeared in another art detective discussion of 11 Aprl 2016

I thought Martin supported the proposal in the previous discussion ("Is anything more known about these portraits on glass?") that this image, the same as 'Portrait of a Man' at Sunderland, and similar to that in Stirling, was in fact the Prince of Wales.

All these popular (almost folk art) paintings on glass refer to people who were popular heroes in the 1860s. The Prince of Wales went on an American tour in 1860, was 21 in 1862 and was married in 1863, so was much in the news.

Kieran Owens,

Were these glass-painted portraits supposed to be reverse images? In c.1860, Edward VII, Price of Wales, parted his hair on his left-hand-side.

Martin Hopkinson,

I think that the problem is that I suggested this before the 11 April 2016, but it is only now that my earlier Sunderland suggestion has surfaced - we should close this latter discussion by referring back to the 11 April 2016 one

Osmund Bullock,

This is the other discussion: https://bit.ly/2De3AjE. I agree this one should be closed to avoid covering the same ground again - for instance the reverse parting on this example is I think explained by Pieter's previous information about how these C19th mass-produced types were made by pasting a print on the back of the glass, scraping away almost all of it, and then painting (still on the back) the image using the remnant as an outline.

Kieran Owens,

Thank you for that reminder, Osmund. Flipping the painting, the attached composite might show from where that image came.

1 attachment

Thank you all! As Martin says, this pending discussion pre-dated the public discussion and covers the same ground, much of which has been answered. The proposal should have been closed long since, but cropped up in a search yesterday and that public discussion is evidently one that slipped my net when I joined 6 months ago. Sunderland's is still listed as 'Portrait of a Man', so I will discuss these records with the collections. I am out of the office now until Tuesday 12 February.

Osmund Bullock,

Actually thinking more carefully about the logic of this, the method described would *not* reverse the image at all, unless the print were pasted with the printed side facing away from the glass - and if you did that, as soon as you started scraping, the image would disappear and there's be nothing left to copy!

However, if the print were temporarily pasted on to the *front* facing backwards, the glass could be turned over and the image simply copied on the back. Once the painting was finished and dry, the glass could be turned over and the print removed completely from the front. In fact, if the print were merely wetted to make it stick to the glass, it could be carefully peeled off afterwards and re-used - much more economical. That's my guess.

I don't think these paintings have yet been systematically researched, but I believe the were painted directly on the reverse of a sheet of glass. The images of some if not all are copied, I am sure, from widely circulated carte de visite photographs. They are surely too large to be made directly from prints. The earlier tradition of pasting prints on the back of glass and colouring them (a form of hinterglasmalerei) is a different thing - the printed image itself is still visible (there are several Print Quarterly articles about these techniques).

Kieran made the interesting observation that this image is reversed, but this could easily have been an error by the painter, who forget that the image would be seen from the other side.

Barbara Bryant, group leader, and Marion have asked me to formally close this discussion with the conclusions already reached in the previous discussion on glass paintings (https://bit.ly/2De3AjE). Martin, who proposed the current discussion some time ago, and Osmund are also of the opinion that it can be closed.

The conclusion is that figure depicted is Edward VII when he was Prince of Wales, and the date probably the early 1860s.