Melbourne Portrait Group Seminar | Mark Shepheard

Anton Raphael Mengs, ‘Portrait of Don Luis de Borbon’ (c. 1774-77.). National Gallery of Victoria.

Mark Shepheard, ‘A tale of two portraits: Mengs and Don Luis de Borbón’.

The National Gallery of Victoria has recently acquired a superb portrait by Anton Raphael Mengs (1728-79), one of the eighteenth century’s greatest portrait painters. The sitter is the Infante Don Luis de Borbón (1727-85), brother of the Spanish king, Carlos III. Don Luis was a major patron of the arts, employing the cellist and composer Luigi Boccherini, as well as being an early supporter of the young Goya.

Allan Ramsay portrait of ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ discovered

The Guardian reports on the recent discovery of a portrait by Scottish artist Allan Ramsay of the Young Pretender, Prince Charles Edward Stuart. The portrait was painted in Edinburgh in 1745, the year of the unsuccessful Jacobite rebellion that was ruthlessly crushed the following year at the Battle of Culloden. The discovery was made by Bendor Grosvenor, a director of the Philip Mould Gallery in London and well known from the BBC’s Fake or Fortune? and from his own blog Art History News.