Search the Bridgeman archive by uploading an image. Drag your file here or click Browse below.
Please note that only low-res files should be uploaded. Results will return exact matches only. Any images with overlay of text may not produce accurate results. Details of larger images will search for their corresponding detail.
Drag file here
Upload
Processing search results
Error:
Search by Colour
Choose your Colours
Add up to 5 colours and slide the dividers to adjust the composition
John Opie, RA (St Agnes 1761 London 1807).
Oil painting on canvas, Colonel, Dr John Matthews, MP (1755-1826), aged 29 by John Opie, RA (St Agnes 1761 London 1807), 1784. Inscribed on label on back of stretcher: Portrait, by OPIE, of JOHN MATTHEWS ESQ. M.D. aetat. 29. PHYSICIAN to/St GEORGE'S HOSPITAL [1780-1793] afterwards M.P. for the COUNTY OF HEREFORD [1803-6]/painted in the year 1784./price ten guineas./the property of ELIZABETH MATTHEWS, his eldest daughter. A half-length portrait, wearing a scarlet robe and striped shirt. Dr John Matthews of Belmont, Burton (1755-1826), known as Colonel Matthews, married Elisabeth Ellis. Great-grandfather of Alice de La Chere, the wife of Alfred Hornyold. The same sitter as in the Romney copy and as in the much later portrait of him by Owen, but as a fashionable young physician, in his robes as a doctor of medicine.A label on the back records that this was painted for 10 guineas in 1784, the year in which Matthews delivered the Gulstonian Lectures, after resigning as physician to St Georges Hospital, and just before he retired to the country. Opie was the sensation of the day,The Cornish Wonder, who had been brought to London by Dr John Wolcot three years before, and exhibited his first major subject-picture, The School (Loyd Collection), at the RA the same year as he painted this portrait.
Sizergh Castle, Cumbria
Photo credit
National Trust Photographic Library / Bridgeman Images
