Portrait Of A Young Girl With Her Spaniel - Attributed To Charles D’agar (c.1669 - 1723)

A large scale, richly coloured and highly decorative portrait of a young girl holding her spaniel which presents a charming vision of childhood in the first years of eighteenth-century England.

The attractive young lady stands full length in a forest clearing, under the same of a tree. In the distance, a tower and church spire can just be glimpsed.With her head slightly inclined she looks directly out at the viewer and engages us with her sympathetic gaze.

Sitting aside her upon a grassy outcrop is her pet spaniel, she rests one arm upon it, and with the other she strokes the pup affectionately under its chin.

Her costume of a long blue shimmering silk dress and wrap both have finely executed drapery, the latter introduces a welcome element of dynamic movement to this work. The confident handing of the sitters face and plaited hair are also notable.

This portrait provides a captivating insight into early-Georgian ideas of childhood innocence. Later in the century, child art began to move to emphasise the innocence and purity of childhood by showing children at play or in moments of un-self-aware contemplation. Here, however, the sitter is shown dressed as a grown-up lady might have been in her portrait, and in this state is as much a miniature woman as a child.

Portraits of children, especially those of this scale, were a great luxury in this period and, while the sitter remains tantalisingly unknown, it can be assumed that she was a member of a high status or aristocratic family.

Charles D’Agar (1669– 1723)
Born in Paris, D’Agar was brought up first in England to where his Protestant parents emigrated towards the end of the 1670s and then in Copenhagen. His father, Jacques d’Agar (1642-1715), was himself an artist who achieved such rank as to paint a full-length portrait of one of Charles II’s mistresses, Louise de Kéroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth (Det Nationalhistoriske Museum på Ferderksborg, Denmark). Having moved back to London from Copenhagen in 1691, d’Agar established himself as a successful court portraitist working largely in the manner of the highly successful Swedish-born artist Michael Dahl (1659-1743).

His largely occluded by that of his father in the historical record, little is known of d’Agar’s lifetime and their work is frequently confused. He died in 1723, having suffered from both gout and kidney stones for many years, according to George Vertue. Of the works that can be attributed to him, his portrait of Lord George Douglas as a Child (1709; Duke of Buccleuch) is perhaps his most celebrated work. This portrait, then, also serves to enhance d’Agar’s reputation as a portraitist of children.

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Canvas: 57" x 49.5" / 145cm x 1255cm.
Frame: 64"x 55.5" / 162cm x 141cm.