Buck's Beauty & Rowlandson's Connoisseur c.1799
Pen and watercolour | 27.7 x 18.5 cm (sheet of paper) | RCIN 913698
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A pen and watercolour of a lascivious connoisseur avidly examining a female beauty with the aid of his eye glass. The man wears a wig and frock coat and carries a sword. The woman stands in right profile and with her hands in front of her, impassively returns the man's gaze. Rowlandson is contrasting the woman drawn in the style of the fashionable portraitist Adam Buck and the connoisseur drawn with his own trademark exuberant penstrokes. The image laughs at the styles of two of the best-known London artists of the day. By the late 1790s ‘Rowlandson’s Connoisseur’ was as familiar a figure as ‘Buck’s Beauty’.This is the original drawing from which a print was made in 1800.
Provenance
Perhaps the drawing purchased on the 31 May 1813 from Colnaghi by George IV when Prince Regent (RA GEO/MAIN/27850: 'A drawing by Rowlandson ' for 10s 6d, the price inscribed on the verso)
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Creator(s)
Acquirer(s)
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Medium and techniques
Pen and watercolour
Measurements
27.7 x 18.5 cm (sheet of paper)
Object type(s)
Other number(s)
RL 13698Bibliographic reference(s)
O(E) : Oppé, A.P., 1950. English Drawings in the Collection of His Majesty The King at Windsor Castle, London p. 526