John Clark(e) with the animals at Sandpit Gate c. 1825
Oil on panel | 83.3 x 78.2 cm (support, canvas/panel/stretcher external) | RCIN 403397
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Full-length portrait of John Clark(e), an old grey-haired man, standing in a long green coat in front of Sandpit Gate. He is holding a bowl in his right hand for an ostrich and pats a pony with his left; deer, parrots, a kangaroo and other animals surround him.
Lewis is best known today as a painter of Spanish and oriental subjects in oil and watercolour; during the first half of his career he was an animal specialist, trained by his father Frederick Christian Lewis (1779-1856) and befriended by Lawrence and Landseer.
This work can be dated to c. 1825 by analogy with the ‘Buck-Shooting at Windsor Great park’ and it was be assumed that it was painted for George IV. It certainly depicts Sandpit Gate one of the exits from the Windsor Great Park where George IV kept his menagerie of exotic animals. The elderly keeper is traditionally identified as one Thomas Clark, a park keeper living at Sandpit Gate in 1792, who would have been roughly 78 at the date of this painting.
David Wilkie’s Spanish subjects were a formative influence on Lewis later work; here he seems to be looking at Wilkie’s depictions of everyday life in Britain (with perhaps a glance at some of George IV’s Dutch and Flemish paintings). The dark tonality of this panel tells us that Clark is out feeding very early in the morning or very late at night; the way that the animals gather round suggest that he has Noah-like way with them. There is perhaps some comedy intended: an old English retainer in such a setting should surely be feeding chickens not a wallaby and a ostrich.Provenance
Painted for George IV; recorded in the Billiard Room (Room no 554) at Windsor Castle in 1878
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Medium and techniques
Oil on panel
Measurements
83.3 x 78.2 cm (support, canvas/panel/stretcher external)
94.5 x 87.6 x 3.5 cm (frame, external)
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