AFA Summer 2019

2019 Antiques & Fine Art 105 Paintings were set in Chinese-made, European-style gilt frames to mimic the effect of the original. The dimensions of paintings typically precisely matched those of the copied print. Lady Fortescue’s portrait on glass does in width, although not in height; the trees above her head in the original have been cropped. While allegorical prints were popular subjects for copies, rarer were portraits like Cotes’ Lady Fortescue. Because neither Lady Fortescue nor her family are known to have traveled to China or commissioned the reverse glass portrait, the question arises for whom the painting was created. It was perhaps not the sitter’s identity but rather Cotes’ elegant portrayal of her, like an allegory of beauty, that was the impetus for the translation into a reverse glass painting.  Fig. 2: Unknown artist, after Edward Savage, Liberty, Canton (or Guangzhou) China, 1796. Oil paint, gilt, glass, 23 x 171⁄10 inches. Bequest of Henry Francis du Pont (1957.817). Courtesy, Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library. Olivia Armandroff is a first year, Lois F. McNeil Fellow in the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture specializing in print media. 1. Graham Child, World Mirrors, 1650–1900 (London: Sotheby’s Publications; New York, NY: Distributed in the USA and Canada by Rizzoli International Publications, 1990), 361. 2. Carl L. Crossman, The Decorative Arts of the China Trade: Paintings, Furnishings, and Exotic Curiosities (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collectors’ Club, 1991), 205. 3. Maggie Cao, “Washington in China: A Media History of Reverse Painting on Glass,” Common Place: The Journal of Early American Life 15, no.4 (Summer 2015). 4. Cotes’ painting of Lady Fortescue has not been located. The portraits of her siblings, including John Hooke Campbell, Colonel Alexander Campbell, Elizabeth Campbell, Mrs. John Adams, Pryse Campbell, and his wife, Sarah Bacon, Mrs. Pryse Campbell, all painted between 1762 and 1763, are held by the National Galleries of Scotland.