Samuel Northcote, the Artist's Father

Maker James Northcote (British, 1746-1831)

SitterSitter: Samuel Northcote (British, 1709 - 1791)

Collections

British Paintings

ClassificationsPAINTINGS

Date1773

Mediumoil on canvas

Dimensionscanvas: 27 1/4 × 22 in. (69.2 × 55.9 cm.) frame: 34 1/2 × 29 × 2 3/4 in. (87.6 × 73.7 × 7 cm.)

Credit LineThe Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Gift of Leon and Ella Wilburne

Label TextSamuel Northcote, a watchmaker and optician, was born at Plymouth in 1709, the son of an unsuccessful painter. Three of his seven children survived to maturity, among them the artist James Northcote and his brother Samuel (1743-1813). Samuel Northcote, Sr., died in 1791.

In addition to its significance as one of James Northcote's earliest extant works, this portrait of the artist's father Samuel Northcote, provides compelling evidence of the youthful artist's emulation of Joshua Reynolds, the most successful British painter of his day. According to an old inscription on the back of the canvas, the portrait was executed in 1773, midway through Northcote's tenure as Reynolds's pupil and resident assistant. The portrait was apparently modeled on a much earlier painting by Reynolds, Dr. John Mudge, F.R.S., executed in 1752 and given by the artist to the sitter in token of their lifelong friendship. Mudge was also a friend and neighbor of Northcote's family in Plymouth. A physician and surgeon, Mudge shared Samuel Northcote's interest in the science of optics, as evidenced by his treatise on the subject, published in 1777. It was probably Mudge who commissioned the first painting that James Northcote showed at the Royal Academy: a portrait of Dr. Mudge's brother, the London horologist Thomas Mudge, exhibited in 1773, the year of the present painting.
Reynolds's portrait of John Mudge would have been well known to Northcote (as well as his father), and the young artist had an opportunity of seeing it again during his visit to Plymouth in late summer 1773. It was evidently during that visit that he painted the present portrait. After his return to London in early October, Northcote received a letter from his brother, informing him that Reynolds (then on a visit to Plymouth) had called to see the paintings he had been working on. "He...asked to see your father's portrait, imagining that you had just finished it. After he had seen this he desired I would let him see the others of me. He said your father's was a very good head, but not so good a likeness as mine, and observed that the nose in your father's picture was too full at the end." Bulbous nose notwithstanding, and despite the hard, mask-like quality of the face (possibly exacerbated by the painting's compromised condition), Northcote seems to have captured a good likeness, as demonstrated by comparison with a more sophisticated portrait of his father, which he painted thirteen years later (Lady Rosalind Northcote collection).
Like Reynolds in his portrait of Mudge, Northcote here portrays his father as a man of modest means but substantial intellect. He is dressed in a similar sort of loose black cap and baggy woollen mantle, which (together with the subdued, nearly monochromatic color scheme, chiaroscuro, and intimate mode of presentation) calls to mind the portraiture of the Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-69). The sitter's distant gaze and the book held open with his right thumb establish a mood of thoughtful concentration. The qualities of asceticism and mentality emphasized by the portrait accurately reflect Northcote's conception of his father. In his memoirs, he described him as "a pious, studious, humble and ingenious man, one better calculated to make a good use of money when got than to get it," but "valued by all who knew him for his great integrity, abilities and general knowledge."
It is ironic that among his first independent efforts Northcote should have chosen to paint his father, who had strenuously objected to his choice of career, considering it difficult to master and uncertain of remuneration. During the 1770s, however, Northcote eagerly sought sittings from family and friends as a means of gaining experience in painting something other than the drapery and accessories delegated to him by Reynolds. As late as 1776 he remained fearful of painting anyone he did not know. The present portrait may also have been undertaken as a piece of propaganda, intended to soften his father's resistance to his career. The portrait's allusions to the prestigious model of Rembrandt and to Reynolds's painting of John Mudge were surely calculated to impress.
Decades later, toward the end of his career, Northcote grew concerned with preserving a record of his experiences and accomplishments. He began to organize his papers and entrusted autobiographical notes for a future memoir to Sir William Knighton (1776-1836), physician and private secretary to George IV. Knighton and other collectors of Northcote's works seem to have shared the artist's biographical and documentary tendencies. In 1809 Lord Cowper purchased a different portrait of the artist's father for twenty guineas, and among Knighton's numerous paintings by Northcote were a portrait of the artist's sister, Mary, painted in 1803, and a self-portrait of Northcote that Knighton had commissioned in 1814. In early May 1828 Knighton asked Northcote to paint a second self-portrait in which the artist would be paired with Knighton's friend, the poet Sir Walter Scott (Exeter Royal Albert Gallery). At the same time, Knighton purchased the present painting which, though executed half a century earlier, was evidently still among the hodgepodge of old and new pictures that filled Northcote's studio.
A century later, The Huntington painting again became part of a motley assortment of art works when it was purchased by Metro Goldwyn Mayer and employed as a studio property. Keen eyes will detect its presence in the background of such films as Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1960). The years in which it provided Hollywood with a traditional element of interior decor provide the most surprising chapter in this painting's eventful history.

Status

Not on view

Object number85.40