Francis Child (1735-1763)
Allan Ramsay (Edinburgh 1713 - Dover 1784)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1758 (signed and dated)
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
1270 x 1016 mm (50 x 40 in)
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Osterley Park and House, London
NT 773372
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Francis Child (1735-1763) by Alan Ramsay (Edinburgh 1713 - Dover 1784), signed and dated, bottom right: A. Ramsay / 1758. A three-quarter-length portrait, wearing a blue velvet coat and waistcoat, holding a tricorn hat. A chalk study for this composition is in the National Gallery of Scotland. The sitter was the son of Samuel Child the younger (d. 1752) of Osterley Park and his wife Agatha Edgar. He succeeded his father as head of Child's Bank in London and inherited Osterley Park in 1752 and employed Robert Adam to remodel it, but died in 1763. He also purchased Upton House (NT), Warwickshire in 1758 from William Bumpstead. He was engaged to Constantia Hempden when he died and left £50,000 to her in his Will. He was succeeded by his brother Robert.
Provenance
In 1871 Inventory: Breakfast Room; possibly the ‘Portrait of the late Francis Child Esqre’ listed in the Dressing Room to the Yellow Damask Bedchamber (Upper Floor) in 1872; recorded at Osterley Park in 1915; photographed hanging above the chimney piece in the Breakfast Room in 1939; on loan from the Earldom of Jersey Trust.
Credit line
Osterley Park, The Jersey Collection
Makers and roles
Allan Ramsay (Edinburgh 1713 - Dover 1784), artist
References
Tipping 1926 H. Avray Tipping, Pictures at Osterely Park, Country Life, 4th December 1926, p. 909, illus. pl. 5 Caw 1937 Sir James L. Caw, Allan Ramsay, Portrait Painter, 1713 - 1784, Walpole Society, Vol. XXXV, 1937, p. 62, p. 62 Hayes 1964 J. Hayes, 'Allan Ramsay at the Royal Academy, The Burlington Magazine, CVI, 1964, pp. 190, 193 Smart 1999 Alastair Smart, Allan Ramsay: A Complete Catalogue of his Paintings, ed. John Ingamells, New Haven & London, 1999, p. 92-93, fig. 482 and fig. 674 for drawing