John Pettie
Photographer: Lock and Whitfield
1882
Woodbury type
4½ x 3½ inches
From the Simon Cooke collection.
A remarkably studied portrait in which the sitter’s demeanour is surely intended to contradict conventional and stereotypical notions of what an artist ‘should look like’. Pettie projects an image of cantankerousness and amused contempt – in sharp opposition to portraits of Leighton and Rossetti as languid dreamers.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image, formatting, and text by Simon Cooke