Edmund Ashfield

Exhibited by Lowell Libson & Jonny Yarker Ltd

Material Pastel

Dimensions 27 x 22 cm (10 ⅝ x 8 ⅝ in)

Status Vetted

About the Work

This dazzling Restoration portrait demonstrates Edmund Ashfield’s exceptional virtuosity as a pastellist. Preserved in immaculate condition and housed in its original Sunderland-type frame this portrait belongs to a small but significant group of pastel portraits Ashfield completed in the 1670s. Bainbrigg Buckeridge described Ashfield as a ‘gentleman well descended’ in his ‘Essay Towards and English Scholl of Painters’ of 1706 and the evidence is that Ashfield was born into a gentry family.

His grandfather, Sir Edmond Ashfield of Chesham, was the dedicatee of Henry Peacham’s treatise on drawing, Graphice, published in 1634. Several early commentators noted Ashfield’s innovative use of pastel and Ashfield is credited with transforming the medium, producing a sequence of luminous portraits which conveyed a strikingly new enamelled effect. Ashfield’s sitters included some of the most significant figures in Restoration London from John Maitland, 1st Duke of Lauderdale secretary for Scottish affairs to Charles II’s daughter, Charlotte Jemima FitzRoy. This exquisite portrait is signed and dated 1674 and depicts Amphilis Tichborne at the time of her marriage to Richard Broughton.

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Provenance

Sotheby’s, 13 March 1986, lot.105;
Private collection, acquired at the above sale by Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox, to 2020;
by descent to 2023;
Lowell Libson & Jonny Yarker Ltd.

Literature

Jane Fenlon, ‘Garret Morphy and His Circle’, Irish Arts Review Yearbook, 1991/1992, p.135, repr;
Neil Jeffares, Dictionary of pastellists before 1800, online edition, cat. no. J.113.107.