Profile Portrait of David Garrick

Based on the evidence of the inscription on the back of the frame, this pair of portraits represents a first and second attempt at a likeness of the famed English Shakespearean actor David Garrick (1717–1779). The profile busts are based on a painting by Benjamin van der Gucht of David Garrick as Steward of the Stratford Jubilee, September 6-7, 1769. The original painting was owned by the Earls of Spencer at Althorp, though it became better known through a widely circulated mezzotint by Joseph Saunders, first printed June 24, 1773, and sold thereafter at his shop in Soho, London (for one example see British Museum, accession no. Ee,3.155).

In van der Gucht’s painting and the later Saunders print, Garrick holds the carved wood medallion and wand with which he was presented by the town clerk of Stratford, William Hunt, in recognition of Garrick’s donation of a statue of Shakespeare to the new Stratford Town Hall and his role as steward of a Shakespeare Jubilee organized in 1769. The medallion and wand were carved from a mulberry wood tree believed to have been planted by William Shakespeare. The medallion itself is preserved in the collections of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

The second wax profile portrait (75.11) was reproduced by Tassie in white glass paste as a circular medallion (see for example Yale Center for British Art, accession no. B2001.2.361) and as a white glass bust that would be mounted to painted paper and framed.

Inscription

Provenance

Provenance (from the French provenir, 'to come from/forth') is the chronology of the ownership, custody, or location of a historical object. Learn more about provenance at the Walters.

Collection of Jefferey (Jeffrey) Whitehead, London, by 1894. With George Robinson Harding, London, by 1911 [date and mode of acquisition unknown]; purchased by Henry Walters, Baltimore, 1911; by bequest to the Walters Art Musuem, 1931.