Title
Giusto Ferdinando Tenducci
Technique
Oil on canvas
Subject
Artist
Dimensions
Height: 74.9cm
Width: 61cm
height (frame): 85cm
width (frame): 73cm
Provenance
Thomas Harris ?; Harris sale, Robins 12 July 1819 (2) (by Gainsborough); Charles Mathews
Other number
Mathews 362 (artist unknown)
RW/CKA 411 (by Gainsborough Dupont)
Exhibition history
1833 London, Queen's Bazaar, Oxford Street, "Mr Mathews's Gallery of Theatrical Portraits" (362)
1982-3 London, Royal Academy, "Royal Opera House Retrospective 1732-1982" (123)
Related works
Coll: Lord Hylton Oil on canvas 76.2 x 63.6 ?, inscr: "Thomas Beach", exh: 1783 (18, 23 or 29), [“The Connoisseur” of July 1913 reported it then to be in the collection of Lord Hylton, Radstock, Somerset], engr: W. Dickinson pub. W. Dickinson 1782, mezzotint 33 x 27.65
Engraving history
Anon. pub. Longman and Broderip, line (in reverse, oval), inscr: "Instruction of / Mr TENDUCCI / to his Scholars" (below)
Literature
E. S. Beach “Thomas Beach” (1934) p. 72 (No. 281); Hayes, 1968
Tenducci wears a dark blue jacket with gold buttons and a red turned-down collar, a white silk waistcoat with green horizontal lines, and a stock with lace at collar and cuffs. He holds sheets of music.
The version in the collection of Lord Hylton shows the sitter wearing a hat with a slightly different style of wig. It has been assumed that this picture was one of Dupont's series painted for Thomas Harris and that the attribution to Gainsborough in the Harris sale catalogue was an optimistic attribution to the artist's uncle. However, there can be no doubt that it is a second version of the Beach in Lord Hylton's collection, possibly a little later than 1782 but certainly dating from the early 1780s.