Colonel, Dr John Matthews, MP (1755-1826), aged 29
John Opie, RA (St Agnes 1761 – London 1807)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1784 (inscribed)
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
750 x 625 mm
Order this imageCollection
Sizergh Castle, Cumbria
NT 998453
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Colonel, Dr John Matthews, MP (1755-1826), aged 29 by John Opie, RA (St Agnes 1761 – London 1807), 1784. Inscribed on label on back of stretcher: Portrait, by OPIE, of JOHN MATTHEWS ESQ. M.D. aetat. 29. PHYSICIAN to/St GEORGE'S HOSPITAL [1780-1793] afterwards M.P. for the COUNTY OF HEREFORD [1803-6]/painted in the year 1784./price ten guineas./the property of ELIZABETH MATTHEWS, his eldest daughter. A half-length portrait, wearing a scarlet robe and striped shirt. Dr John Matthews of Belmont, Burton (1755-1826), known as Colonel Matthews, married Elisabeth Ellis. Great-grandfather of Alice de La Chere, the wife of Alfred Hornyold. The same sitter as in the Romney copy and as in the much later portrait of him by Owen, but as a fashionable young physician, in his robes as a doctor of medicine.A label on the back records that this was painted for 10 guineas in 1784, the year in which Matthews delivered the Gulstonian Lectures, after resigning as physician to St George’s Hospital, and just before he retired to the country. Opie was the sensation of the day,‘The Cornish Wonder’, who had been brought to London by Dr John Wolcot three years before, and exhibited his first major subject-picture, The School (Loyd Collection), at the RA the same year as he painted this portrait.
Provenance
Given by Henry Hornyold Strickland (1890 – 1975) with Sizergh Castle and its estates in 1950
Marks and inscriptions
Verso: Painted in the year 1784, price ten guineas (label on stretcher)
Makers and roles
John Opie, RA (St Agnes 1761 – London 1807), artist