Gentility

In 1826 when this eloquent portrait was painted, Andrew Plimer had already given up his London house in Golden Square and had embarked upon an itinerant career travelling from Brighton on the south coast, west towards Wales and as far north as Scotland. He stayed in country houses where he completed commissions for family portraits in miniature. This though is a rare watercolour and pencil portrait on a larger scale showing a young lady seated contrapposto with her head turned towards the artist. Her dress has a wide collar and is buckled at the waist; her brown hair is curled and upswept with short ringlets framing her face.

The portrait is signed in monogram along the bottom edge AP and dated 1826. It is professionally mounted within a later gilt wood frame and has a Philip Mould Gallery label reverse.

Andrew Plimer (1763-1837) was the son of a Shropshire clockmaker, a trade he and his older brother were expected to assume to. But the two boys had different ideas and so ran away from home, eventually reaching London where Andrew had the good fortune to be taken into service by the famed miniature painter Richard Cosway who, recognising the young man’s budding talent, arranged painting lessons for him. Plimer set up his own studio in 1785 and exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1786 and 1830. In 1835 he settled with his family in Brighton where he died two years later at the age of 74. One of his friends at the time described him as a ‘prosperous and very high-spirited man’.