The Clavey family in their garden at Hampstead
1754
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Measurements
- 124.5 × 99.0 cm
- Inscription
- inscribed in black paint l.l.: Art r (: under r) Devis.fe. / 1754.
- Accession Number
- E1-1976
- Department
- International Painting
- Credit Line
- National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Everard Studley Miller Bequest, 1976
This digital record has been made available on NGV Collection Online through the generous support of Digitisation Champion Ms Carol Grigor through Metal Manufactures Limited - Gallery location
- Not on display
- About this work
-
Arthur Devis made his career in London as a painter par excellence of the ‘conversation piece’- small group portraits in domestic settings that became very popular in England in the first half of the eighteenth century. Charles Clavey, Esquire (1714–82), of Frome in Somerset and Hampstead, Middlesex, was a prominent citizen, and Master of the Worshipful Company of Masons. Devis has placed the Clavey family in what is probably their garden at Hampstead. This setting, in what appears to be a natural landscape, reflects the important shift in taste and garden design which took place in England in the 1750s.
- Subjects (general)
- Portraits Relationships and Interactions
- Subjects (specific)
- children (people by age group) conversation pieces (portraits) families (kinship groups) family portraits gardens (open spaces) Hampstead (neighbourhood) London (inhabited place) United Kingdom (nation)
- Movements
- Georgian (British Renaissance-Baroque style)
- Frame
- English, 18th century, surface not original
Frame
-
-
The frame on the Devis is perhaps the finest of the three frames of this type in the collection. It is also the earliest if it is contemporary with the painting.
The frame on Reynold's Lady Frances Finch is very similar in detail though either through resurfacing or quality of making it lacks some of the crispness of detail seen in the Devis frame. - Framemaker
- Unknown - 18th century
- Date
- c.1754
- Materials
-
carved timber and gold leaf