Portrait of an Elderly Woman

After Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577 - 1640)

Engraver James Watson (English, 1740 - 1790)

After Cornelis de Vos (Flemish, 1584 - 1651)

Date1778

MediumMezzotint

DimensionsOverall: 18 7/16 x 12 3/8in. (46.8 x 31.4cm)
Image: 16 1/8 x 12in. (41 x 30.5cm)
Plate: 18 x 12in. (45.7 x 30.5cm)

ClassificationsPRINTS

Credit LineOwen D. Young Collection. Gift of Mrs. Josephine Young Case and Mr. Richard Young

Terms

Object number66.221

Description

On View

Not on view

Collections

Graphic Arts

CopyrightNo known copyright restrictions.

Label TextThis print reproduces a picture that in the 18th century was believed to have been painted by the great 17th-century Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens. The work then was in the private collection of the English statesman Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford (1676-1745). The art collection Walpole assembled at his country house, Houghton Hall, Norfolk, was one of the century's most famous. Twenty years after Walpole died, his grandson sold more than two hundred works from this collection, including this one, to Empress Catherine the Great of Russia. James Watson's mezzotint, made from a copy of the picture executed by the artist Joseph Farington, is part of a series of prints issued by the enterprising publisher John Boydell (1719-1804) when there was a public outcry that the sale of Walpole's paintings to a foreign buyer would deprive England of a collection that could form the basis of a national public collection. The painting now hangs in the Hermitage Museum, Moscow, attributed to Rubens' Flemish contemporary, Cornelis de Vos. PDS