A Portrait of a Boy in a Red Coat

Attrib. To THOMAS BARDWELL

1704 - 1767

English School 

A Portrait of a Boy in a Red Coat 

Oil on canvas

76 x 63.5 cms 

30 x 25 inches

Bardwell painted portraits and decorative pictures.  He also wrote and lectured on artistic technique.  He was born in East Anglia in 1704 and is first recorded as painting in 1728 in Bungay, Suffolk.  Between 1729 and 1741 he painted a number of over mantels and country house views.  His few conversation pieces were executed between 1736 and 1740.  His dated portraits begin with ‘Lord Rochford,’ a Suffolk peer, to whom he later dedicated his book, The Practice of Painting and Perspective Made Easy in 1756.   Bardwell visited London in the 1740s and 1750s and in 1752 and 1753 he was commissioned to paint throughout Scotland.   From about 1759 onwards, he settled in Norwich, where he had a very profitable studio.    

Busts and half-length portraiture, such as this painting, were Bardwell’s speciality.   The composition in his full-length portraiture is directly copied from Van Dyck and represents his most ambitious work. Like Bardwell, Thomas Hudson, the court painter, was strongly influenced by Van Dyck in his treatment of costume.  In this respect, Bardwell’s technique is regarded as on a par with that of Hudson.  This painting is framed in an 18^th century, carved, giltwood frame in keeping with the period of the painting.