A Gent in Calcutta

This striking portrait is painted in the distinctive en grisaille style perfected by Samuel Andrews during his time in India. Set against a darkly painted background, the profile is painted in white and shades of grey.

It is likely that the sitter was employed by the East India Company and that the portrait was intended as a memento for his family back in Britain. Ruggedly handsome, he wears a double-breasted coat, a shirt with a standing collar and a stylishly deep stock knotted in a bow. He has side-whiskers and his curls are fashionably ruffled.

The portrait is signed in black under the bust-line against the dark background, ‘S. Andrews 1804’. There is a brown spot on his coat but otherwise it’s in good condition. It resides in the original papier-mâché frame with convex glass and a star hanger.

Irish-born Samuel Andrews spent most of his working life in India having travelled to Madras in 1791 where he later took up occupancy of a house once lived in by fellow artist John Smart. By 1798 he was living in Calcutta where this portrait would have been painted. Andrews never returned home; he died in Patna in September 1807, aged just forty.