Jean-Baptiste van Loo, 1684–1745, French, active in Britain (1737–42)
Title:
The Rt. Honorable Stephen Poyntz, of Midgham, Berkshire
Date:
1732
Materials & Techniques:
Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
50 x 40 inches (127 x 101.6 cm)
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1985.21
Gallery Label:
Jean-Baptiste van Loo belonged to a dynasty of leading French painters and established himself as a portrait painter in London between 1737 and 1742. His polished rococo style made him popular with members of the elite like Stephen Poyntz, a diplomat who spent years in foreign courts before being appointed in 1730 as governor and steward of the household of the Duke of Cumberland, George II’s second eldest son and brother of the Prince of Wales. Poyntz remained a friend and confidant of the royal family and cultivated an image of himself as cosmopolitan and highly cultured. There is a marked contrast between Van Loo’s sparkling manner and the more prosaic style of his English rivals such as Thomas Hudson. Hudson’s xenophobic friend William Hogarth decried the Frenchman as a "Puffing Monopoliser [of] all the people in fashion," blaming him for the "distress" and "poverty" of many a native English portrait painter. Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016
