Capability Brown: Enamel Portrait By William Hopkins Craft
An exceptionally fine enamel on copper portrait of Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, bust-length in a fur-lined green coat by the renowned enamelist William Hopkins Craft (England, circa 1740-circa 1805) Signed on the reverse:
Lancelot Brown
ARM
OB: 6.feb:1783
Æ:67
WH Craft. fect.
1789
William Hopkins Craft
Craft, born in Tottenham, greater London, about 1730, is said to have worked as an enameller in Paris for a time before joining the London enamelling workshop managed by David Rhodes for Wedgwood and Bentley in 1768. Wedgwood employed him to paint designs on cream-coloured earthenware and black Basaltes. Rhodes and Craft decorated the famous neo-classical style First Day’s Vases which celebrated the opening of Wedgwood’s Etruria factory in 1769. Thomas Craft, the Bow porcelain painter was probably William Hopkins Craft’s brother.
After leaving Wedgwood’s in 1770, Craft turned exclusively to painting enamels on copper. An adept painter of portrait miniatures on enamel, he also worked in small scale on watch cases and chatelaines. More frequently, he painted unusually large portrait plaques such as that of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1786) in the Ashmolean Museum and Sir William Hamilton (1802) in the British Museum – both over 17cms high. Craft also specialised in allegories such as that showing England as a colonising power which embellishes a 1779 clock in the Musee d’Horlogerie du Locle, Switzerland. Occasionally he combined portraiture with allegory as instanced by the magnificent pair of ormolu-framed portraits of ‘George III as Lord of the Sea trampling America’ and ‘Queen Charlotte as Ceres’ (1773) in the British Museum. Craft’s clients included royalty, politicians and scientists, and he exhibited seventeen enamels at the Royal Academy between 1774 and 1795.
Provenance
Sale, Sotheby’s, London, 14 July 1969
With Asprey, London, 1992
Literature
D. Foskett, Collecting Miniatures, 1979, pp. 289-290, ill., pl.74a
The present work is derived from Nathaniel Dance’s portraits of Capability Brown, now in the National Portrait Gallery, London (see: NPG 6049 and NPG 1490).
A portrait of Joshua Reynolds also by William Hopkins Craft and in an identical frame is in the collection of The Ashmolean Museum (illustrated)
A portrait of Sir William Hamilton also by William Hopkins Craft is in the collection of The British Museum (illustrated) {The Ashmolean Museum also have another version of this portrait in their collection}
A pair of portraits of King George III and Queen Charlotte by William Hopkins Craft is in the collection of The British Museum (illustrated)
