Ralf Ehmann

Portrait Jeremiah Meyer,
Kopie nach Nathaniel Dance-Holland (English, 1735 – 1811)

Öl auf Leinwand
2024

Description

The sitter is depicted half-length, turned partly to the proper right, against a dark umber background. He wears a powdered wig and white stock. The remaining part of his figure is unfinished. The outlines show his two arms propped up against a large portfolio sketched in umber paint.

Gallery Label

This unfinished portrait presents Jeremiah Meyer, a celebrated portrait miniaturist, holding a portfolio. While many details remain unrealized, this painting reveals how Nathaniel Dance laid out his compositions. Using loose, gestural brushstrokes, he delineated the figure and background on a buff-colored ground. On the sitter’s left shoulder is a patch of burnt-orange paint, indicating Dance’s color choice for the overcoat. It has dripped down toward the bottom of the canvas.

Provenance

Erskine Hewitt (1871-1938), London and New York, by October 18, 1938;

His posthumous sale, The Erskine Hewitt Collection, Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, October 20, 1938, lot 803;

With Belmont Galleries, Inc., New York, by January 1949;

Purchased from Belmont by Kenneth Spencer (1902-1960), Kansas City, MO, January 1949-February 20, 1960;

To his widow, Helen Foresman Spencer (1902-1982), Kansas City, MO, February 20, 1960-February 15, 1982;

Her bequest to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1982.