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appearance. The portrayal of
Okeover Hall is one example. There were several revised sets of architect's drawings for this, and the design sent as a guide and painted by Devis is completely different from the one eventually chosen by the owner. The people grouped in the foreground, displaying all the trappings of leisure, are obviously studio portraits and Devis was not required to visit the site of the unfinished building project. If he had, he would have realised, not just that the house was being built to a different plan but that, without workmen of any sort visible, his idealised landscape hid a very different social reality than the one he was required to depict. Another example of judicious concealment is the bucolic background given "Edward Rookes-Leeds and his Family" (c.1763-8), the source of whose income was the industrial workings that occupied the bulk of his estate.
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stonework as shown but was of brick. Doubtless much of this was an understood convention of the conversation piece genre; but arising from it is the possibility suggested that one aspect of Devis's practice was to have paintings of figures in such interiors ready prepared in his studio and requiring only the faces to be filled in - with a sliding scale of charges for extra details such as an elaborate carpet or ceramics on a mantelpiece.
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the hierarchy within the marriage relationship. He hands her the music with which she will accompany his playing on the violin that lies ready on the piano. Another sign of her background role is that she sits, while he is standing nearer the window. The man's financial status is further suggested by the fact that the light source is the handsome three-sectioned
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Given these conventions, however, by studying Devis's paintings it was possible to decode the message about themselves that his sitters wished to convey. For example, the painting of "A Gentleman and Lady at the
Harpsichord" (otherwise known as "The Duet", 1749), suggests conjugal harmony, but also
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shown in Devis's portrait of Roger
Newdigate (1756-8), who holds the plan for the room on his knee. On the other hand, "Breaking-up Day at John Clayton's School in Salford" (1738-40), with its confused transition from inside to outside, is pure Baroque fantasy. The actual building had no such noble
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It has been remarked that what appears in a Devis painting is often "a magical world of make-believe" which portrays its sitters and their surroundings, not as they actually were but as they aspired for them to be. Depictions of buildings by Devis cannot always be taken as proof of their actual
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was commenting on a projected portrait of his nephew by Devis: "I am much afraid it will be frightful for I understand, his pictures are all of a sort; they are whole lengths of about 2 feet long & the person is always represented in a genteel attitude, either leaning against a pillar, or
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there, he switched to portraiture and acquired a considerable reputation, although this success did not last. Unable to adapt to later fashionable artistic currents, his commissions declined and his work was largely forgotten after his death until the 20th century revival of interest in the
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58:(19 February 1712 – 25 July 1787) was an English artist whose father, Anthony, was progenitor of what became a family dynasty of painters and writers. The place of Arthur Devis in art history is generally as painter of the type of portrait now called a
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which could be clothed in the latest fashions and so posed as to save his sitters the inconvenience of frequently visiting his studio. These could be arranged according to the recommendations of such books as François
Nivelon's deportment manual,
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which had only just come into fashion. A cultured and fashionable interest in music is also indicated. In other paintings, the globe in the corner of Roger
Hesketh's family portrait and the apparatus on display in that of the academic John Bacon
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married Robert Marris's only daughter, Ellin Devis Marris, and their eldest son, the poet and writer Martin
Farquhar Tupper, married his cousin Isabella Devis, daughter of Arthur William Devis. The daughters of this marriage went on to publish
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below. By the 1750s the focus was more on a central figure, often leaning with elegant grace against a tree – or, in the case of Philip Howard below, seated on a chair to one side with buildings reduced to details in the distant landscape.
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Due to his early training under
Tillemans, Devis's first paintings were panoramic landscapes of stylized detail with minute figures moving about them. The view of Hoghton Tower (1735) is one such; another of the same period features
658:, who painted miniatures of Devis and his wife for the model tomb commissioned after their deaths by their daughter Ellin. The family's creative dynasty was also to continue into the following century. For example, the physician
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197:. This manner was easily adapted to the later background depictions of the mansions and grounds of those who commissioned from Devis the portraits of themselves and their families, as in the 1747 paintings of
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Devis was a hard-working craftsman, receiving his greatest number of commissions for portraits between 1748 and 1758, after which he failed to keep abreast of later developments in the work of such artists as
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With the 20th century revival of interest in the conversation piece, the artist was described as "the tireless Devis" according to the first survey of the genre. Later scholarship by
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Devis's impressive interiors, too, are more often imaginatively concocted out of architectural pattern books than based on reality. One exception is the neo-Gothic library at
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158:. For income he was obliged to take up restoring pictures, though this could be remunerative. As early as 1762 he was working on the ancestral portraits of his patron Sir
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In 1783 Devis sold all the paintings in his possession and in 1787 died in retirement in
Brighton. He was buried in the churchyard of St. Mary Paddington, London.
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Lancashire families and the network of their connections. A story was handed down within his family that Devis himself so resembled the 'young pretender',
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It is a commonplace to describe the figures in Devis's paintings as "doll-like", and with good reason. In common with other artists of his time such as
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of the town and a member of the town council. It may have been his father who was responsible for introducing Devis to the
Flemish painter
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from Duxon Hill, Lancashire", see below). By 1737, however, he had become a portrait painter. In 1745 he established a studio in
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in 1864, while one of them, Ellin
Isabelle, left a biographical account of the family at the end of the century.
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standing by a flower pot, or leading an Italian greyhound on a string, or in some other ingenious pose."
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also was a painter, as was a son-in-law, Robert Marris, who as a young man had lived and travelled with
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Drawing upon his father's civic position, Devis also found his clientele among the members of pro-
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Arthur Holdsworth Conversing with Thomas Taylor and Captain Stancombe by the River Dart (1757)
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The Non-Representation of Agricultural Labourers in 18th and 19th Century English Paintings
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251:(both c. 1742-3), establish that they are men of learning with scientific preoccupations.
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The Education of the Eye: Painting, Landscape, and Architecture in 18th-century Britain
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and later married Arthur Devis's daughter Frances. In his turn, Marris had for pupil
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A Family of Anglers (perhaps the Swaine Family of Fencroft, Cambridgeshire) (1749)
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Despite his fading reputation, in 1768 Devis became president of the newly founded
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more than doubled the number of ascriptions to him from 116 to 281 paintings.
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Sydney H. Pavière, "Biographical notes on the Devis family of painters",
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Golden hours : an illustrated magazine for any time and all times
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The conversation piece : Arthur Devis & his contemporaries
238:(1737) whose conventionality was later deplored by Lord Cavendish.
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between 1777 and 1778, he received the fee of one thousand pounds.
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English Conversation Pictures of the 18th and early 19th Centuries
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and was made a dramatic fragment by the painter's descendant,
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A critical and commercial dictionary of the works of painters
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Breaking-Up Day at Dr Clayton's School at Salford (c. 1738)
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713:"Dictionary of National Biography entry for Arthur Devis"
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Portrait of a Lady in a Landscape (1750) by Arthur Devis
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Devis paintings and illustrations in the public domain
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William Farrington of Shawe Hall, Lancashire (c. 1743)
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John Shaw, 4th Bt (1728-1799), of Eltham Lodge (1757)
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The Clavey family in their garden at Hampstead (1754)
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Leak Okeover, Rev. John Allen and Captain Chester at
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Paintings by Devis 'and his circle' sold at auction
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630:Devis married Elizabeth Faulkner (1719–1788) at
907:Andrew Szegedy-Maszak, "Ellen Gates D’Oench",
976:The English Country House in the 18th Century
449:The Duet (1749), Victoria & Albert Museum
381:An Unknown Man with His Daughter (1746-1748)
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693:. New Haven: Yale Center for British Art.
298:Thomas Lister and His Family (1740-1741)
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166:. And for repairing and restoring the "
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1167:73 artworks by or after Arthur Devis
946:"A conversation with Arthur Devis"
747:. Longmans, Green, and co. p.
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591:Sir John van Hatten (c. 1760-1761)
236:The Rudiments of Genteel Behaviour
43:A self-portrait dating from 1742-4
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1225:18th-century English male artists
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1149:The Volume of the Walpole Society
1075:, University of California 1986,
1061:Friends of the National Libraries
741:Seguier, Frederick Peter (1870).
638:, became painters. One daughter,
532:in his Gothic Revival Library at
1235:Artists from Preston, Lancashire
1153:vol. 25 (1936-1937), pp. 115-166
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369:and His Family (1745-1747)
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715:. Oxford University Press
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461:Thomas Cave Family (1749)
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18:Arthur Devis (1712-1787)
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1073:Landscape and Ideology
990:D'Oench 1980, page 20.
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877:D'Oench 1980, page xi.
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834:D'Oench 1980, page 18.
824:January 1881, pp.63-65
665:Poems by Three Sisters
409:Mr Peter Ducane (1747)
195:Hornby Hall and Castle
128:Martin Farquhar Tupper
124:Dictionary of Painters
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1127:D'Oench 1980, page x.
999:D'Oench 1980, page 23
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116:Charles Edward Stuart
71:conversation piece.
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898:(London, 1971), p.68
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68:topographical artist
32:Arthur William Devis
1189:Mr and Mrs Atherton
896:Conversation Pieces
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227:Thomas Gainsborough
187:Ellen Gates D'Oench
144:Lord John Cavendish
81:Preston, Lancashire
1195:Walker Art Gallery
1051:1983, pp. 23-5, 67
958:Penelope McElwee,
886:G. C. Williamson,
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120:Matthew Pilkington
105:Great Queen Street
62:. After moving to
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643:
629:
619:Jonas Hanway
577:Corby Castle
435:Richard Bull
395:Okeover Hall
240:
235:
220:
212:
208:
203:Okeover Hall
191:
184:
176:
168:Painted Hall
149:
132:
123:
109:
78:
56:Arthur Devis
55:
54:
36:
1215:1787 deaths
1210:1712 births
1137:Hathi Trust
1106:1983, p. 48
1091:, CUP 1993
691:(Exh. cat.)
640:Ellin Devis
606:(1722-1762)
536:(1756-1758)
534:Arbury Hall
346:Mr and Mrs
215:Arbury Hall
164:Arbury Hall
97:Marco Ricci
1204:Categories
1023:1983, p.48
892:Mario Praz
859:1983, p.32
847:1983, p.12
843:Quoted in
760:References
273:Lancashire
1193:, at the
170:" of the
75:Biography
1187:Devis's
711:(2008).
112:Jacobite
1191:(c1743)
1077:pp.25-6
719:20 June
671:Sources
255:Gallery
93:Pannini
85:freeman
1171:Art UK
980:p. 199
924:Art UK
753:devis.
697:
626:Family
437:(1747)
350:(1744)
64:London
1093:p.182
1038:p. 54
964:p. 27
1173:site
721:2013
695:ISBN
528:Sir
225:and
201:and
181:Work
138:and
95:and
575:of
365:of
271:in
249:FRS
162:at
122:'s
1206::
1151:,
894:,
822:,
751:.
749:56
723:.
703:.
34:.
20:)
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