- Museum number
- 2009.2
- Object
- Framed oil painting: The Pitt Family of Encombe by William Hoare (c.1707–1792), c.1758-1761
- Description
- A gentleman and lady standing in a landscape, three-quarter length, with a small boy seated on a hummock of grass to their left. The gentleman, on the left and looking towards the viewer, wears a close-curled wig and red satin suit with brown coat. His right hand is placed on his wife's shoulder and he holds her left hand in his. She is bare-headed, wearing an ochre satin gown open from the top of the bodice to reveal a white petticoat with a jewelled belt. Her head is turned towards her husband while her right hand is placed on the little boy's shoulder. The boy, looking at the viewer, wears a white frock, blue sash and red shoes. He holds a stick. In the background on the right, part of a classical portico in the Corinthian order is visible among trees and shrubs.In a carved and gilded Maratta-style frame [probably a modern or reworked frame added when the painting was with Leger Galleries in the 1980s].
- Materials
- Oil
- Inscription
- inscribed upper left: John Pitt Marcia his wife / Da. Of Marcus Antony Morgan/ & W m . Morton Pitt their Son
- On display?
- Yes
Further description
- Simple name
- Painting
- Subject
- Portrait
- Dimensions
- regular: 140.0cm (h) x 118.0cm (w)
Right of window:
Lady Emily Kerr as a Bacchante
William Hoare (1707–1792)
Oil on canvas, about 1770
Left of the window:
The Pitt Family of Encombe
William Hoare (about 1707–1792)
Oil on canvas, between 1758 and 1761
William Hoare was Georgian Bath’s longest- established artist. By the 1750s his studio dominated Bath’s market for oil paintings and he prospered even after the arrival of the younger Thomas Gainsborough.
The contrasting styles of these two large works show how Hoare adapted his technique to suit changes in fashion. The Pitt Family, which owes much to the seventeenth-century master Van Dyck, was the first painting Hoare sent to be exhibited in London in 1761.
A331, 2009.2 Purchased with assistance from the V&A/MLA Purchase Grant Fund, the Art Fund, the Beecroft Bequest, the Friends of the Holburne Museum, and private donors, 2009
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