A precocious talent, Henry Singleton worked as a professional portraitist from the youthful age of 16. Entering the Royal Academy Schools in 1783, he won silver and gold medals 1784 and 1788 and attracted the praise of Sir Joshua Reynolds. This early success no doubt helped him secure an important commission in 1793 from the Royal Academy to paint the group portrait ‘The Royal Academicians Assembled in their Council Chamber’. Containing over forty likenesses it amply displays his considerable talent for portraiture, a talent that led to a number of commissions from amongst others William Chambers, Richard Cosway, Johann Zoffany, Lord Nelson and Admiral Vernon. Noted also for his paintings inspired by the Bible and from literary sources, many being engraved in mezzotint, he achieved a widespread popularity during his own lifetime.
The present portrait is a notable early work undertaken whilst Singleton was still a student of just 19 at the Royal Academy Schools. Influenced no doubt by the small full lengths executed by such artists as Edward Alcock and more importantly Arthur Devis, Singleton seems to have injected the format with a fluidity of brushwork and distinctness of form that is more commonly seen on a much larger scale. On the basis of this picture his early portrait style seems to echo Romney and at times is similar to Raeburns approach, a Scottish artist who worked in Reynolds studio in London in the spring of 1784, and therefore might have encountered Singleton. Depicting a gentleman at ease within his environment the sitter is depicted as a sensitive and cultured man with a poetic rather than a materialistic frame of mind. Sat on a rocky outcrop beneath some trees he gazes across the rolling landscape that unfolds beyond the pictures edge and which is evident by the countryside behind. Some ruins are clearly visible, hinting of the Grand Tour and further suggesting the scholarly and urbane nature of the sitter. The distant grey form of the mountains together with the encroaching clouds in the summer sky emphasise the sometimes turbulent nature of such deep rooted, Romantic, notions.
Examples of Singletons work can be found in London at the National Portrait Gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum, Tate Britain and British Museum and in the U.S.A at the National Gallery, Washington D.C.
Exhibited: Statements of Self-Importance – The Portrait in Europe 1660-1950, Langston Gallery, London, 2009