Just this - portrait of an unknown young man, "Circle of Augustus John"

 

This was recently shown online as being for sale at Spitalfields House - Phillip Lucas, United Kingdom. And I know nothing more than that. Not the artist, not the sitter. Not what prompted the attribution to the "circle" of Augustus John. The small painting looks to be in poor condition and/or dirty and/or poorly photographed. But I find it rather compelling in spite of that; there's something about it.

(I've cleaned up the image a bit as a courtesy to the poor, unknown artist.)

Offspring, multiplied - portraits of siblings, 1604-1940

Porträt eines Geschwisterpaares, by Hermann Dörmann, 1940.

 Jacques-Victor Henry, Françoise-Améthyste, and Anne-Athénaïre, children of Henri Christophe, king of Haiti, by an unknown artist, circa 1816-20.

 Three children, by John F. Francis, 1840.

Anna Maria Astley, aged seven, and her brother Edward, aged five and a half, by Francis Cotes, 1767.

Thomas Francis Jeune Hanbury and Hanmer Cecil Hanbury, by Augustus John, circa 1926.

Brother and sister, attributed to Cornelis Ketel, circa 1604.

Brothers, 2nd century Egyptian.

Two brothers, by Ralph Earl, 1783.

Doppelporträt der Töchter des Künstlers, Marie und Hedwig Knaus, by Ludwig Knaus, 1864.

Julija Primic and her brother Janez, by Matevž Langus, circa 1820.

Siblings with dog, attributed to Just Jean Christian Holm, 1884.

Alfonso el Caro and Ana Margarita, by Bartolomé González y Serrano, 1613.

Siblings, by Karl Jakob Theodor Leybold, 1823.

Cornelia, Clara, and Johanna Veth, the artist's sisters, by Jan Veth, 1885.

Isabella and John Stewart, by Wold Traut, circa 1773-1774.

The children of the duc de Chartres, by Gabriel Ferrier, 1880.

The children of Hans and Lisa Hahnloser, by Félix Vallotton, 1912.

Siblings, by George Augustus Baker Jr., 1853.

 Richard and Anne Willis, eldest twin children of Richard Willis, by Joseph Blackburn, 1778.

 Marie-Catherine and Eugène Giroust, by Louis-Léopold Boilly, circa 1803.

The Henderson children, by Carl Christian Heinrich Nahl, circa 1850s.

 Darbar scene with four sons and two grandsons of Shah Jahan, by Bhavanidas, circa 1710.

Siblings - on the reverse inscribed Jakle Emil, Adrienne, Melanie, Valerie, by Ernst Christian Moser, circa 1850s.

Brothers, by Malvin Gray Johnson, 1934.

Jeannette "Jean" MacKelvie (married name Sclater-Booth) and her brother Neil Stewart MacKelvie, by Harrington Mann, 1916.

Three Children in a Landscape, by Jacob Gerritszoon Cuyp, 1635.

The Raymond children, by Deacon Robert Peckham, circa 1838.

Two children, said to be Emily and Robert Cecil, attributed to Johann Kerseboom, circa 1690.

The Sisters (Bessie and Clara Stillman), by Abbott Handerson Thayer, 1884.

Willoughby and Arthur Wood, by Sir Henry Raeburn, 1824.

The children of Sir Edward Walpole, by Stephen Slaughter, 1747.

 Adam Vilhelm, Pauline Frederikke, and Johan Chr. Julius, the children of C.F. Holm, by Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, 1832.

Prescott and Mary Scott, by Enoch Wood Perry Jr.,1881.

Taco Hajo van den Honert and his sister Henriette Cornelia van den Honert, by Philip de László, 1905.

Siblings, by Carl Wilhelm Tischbein, circa 1815-25.

Siblings, by František Brunner- Dvořák, 1912.

Paul and Charlotte, children of the artist, by Lucien J. Simon, circa 1899.

 Portrait of three princesses from Mysore, by Thomas Hickey, circa 1805. (Full disclosure: the one in the middle may be a sister-in-law.)

Lewis and Alexander Beauvais, miniature by William Wood, 1801.

*

When I'm putting together a blog post I try to always remember that the history of art is not exclusively the story of white artists - white male artists - making pictures of white people. Because when you start searching for images online, you might come to that conclusion. The fairly narrow theme of this post was non-contemporary paintings of siblings; I didn't want photographs this time, and I didn't want parents or others included in the work. Still, I easily found a lot to choose from. But it soon became obvious that they were all adorable white children, only white children. So I got more specific in my search. Maybe my search technique is poor, but I found next to nothing; I found plenty of photographs and contemporary portraits of non-white siblings, but no paintings. I'm sure there are reasons for this, historic, economic and societal; who, where, and when have parents gone to the trouble - and expense - of having their children "immortalized" in a painted portrait? At any rate, the gathering of images to meet my criteria was rather frustrating. All this to say that I apologize for the lack of diversity in this group.

Kleines Mädchen zeigt dem Geschwisterchen eine Schildkröte, by Thomas "Tom" von Dreger, 1898 or 1906.
I couldn't find a better/larger image, but had to include it anyway.

Randomly XIX

ND.

Autochrome, circa 1914.

ND. Courtesy Stephen Rutledge.

Décoration de la salle à manger dans la maison de la citoyenne Dervieux, rue Chantereine à Paris, by Jean-Louis Prieur, before 1795.

François-Guillaume Ménageot, by Marie-Victoire Lemoine, circa 1785.

Il Tuffatore (The Diver), by Nino Migliori, 1951.

Photograph by Mike Heydon, New Zealand, 2016.

 Annunciation, by John Shelley, 1968.

Circa 1860s.

Hernando Carlos María Teresa Fitz- James Stuart y Falcó, duque de Peñaranda, conde de Montijo, silver medalist in polo at the Olympic games in Antwerp, 1920.

 Fred Astaire dancing for American GIs, garden front Château de Versailles, 18 September 1944.

Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia and his family, by Heinrich Anton Dähling, 1806.

ND.

Lady Cowdray, by Adam de Colone, 1621.

Les Frères, by Robert Doisneau, 1934.

Lisboa, by Gérard Castello-Lopes, 1957.

 Elegant Ladies in a Townhouse Interior, English School, circa 1830s.

Male nude, by Demetrio Cosola, 1875.

Photograph by J. Van der Heyden, Antwerp, circa 1915-20. Courtesy Ralf De Jonge.

Jilted, by Briton Riviere, 1887.

Lupo, by Giuseppe Baldrighi, circa second half of the eighteenth century.

 Madame Helga von Bluhm, circa 1867-69.

Gown by Dior, photograph by Clifford Coffin, 1948. Photographed in the peristyle of the Grand Trianon, Versailles.

 Promotional art work for the SS Normandie, circa 1935.

ND. Courtesy Stephen Rutledge.

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Portrait of a Buttero, by Edoardo Gelli, circa late nineteenth-early twentieth century.

ND.

Mexico, circa 1870s.

Portrait of a Lady, by Raimundo de Madrazo y Garretta, 1881.

Circa 1860s.

William West, 1st Baron De La Warr (second creation), British School, circa 1550.

 Victoria, Duchess of Kent and her daughter, the future Queen Victoria, by Sir William Beechey, 1821.

Miniature copy of the above, by Henry Bone, circa 1824.

Woman With Birdcage, Afghanistan, by Thomas Abercrombie, 1968.

ND.

ND. Courtesy Stephen Rutledge.

Sermon on the Mount, by Robin Guthrie, 1922.

 Mrs. Mary Livius, née Foster-Barham, by Mather Brown, circa 1785.

Sketch for the above.

ND.

The Ukraine, 1949.

Meleager and Atalanta, by Jacob Jordaens, 1620-23.

 Unknown man, Sweden, 1949.

Circa 1913.

Hog farm employees, Tule Lake Relocation Center, Newell, California, by John Cook, circa 1942-45.

Anna Maria Charlotte Wyndham Quinn, née Dunraven, attributed to Richard Rothwell, circa 1836.

Iris Beerbohm Tree, by Augustus John, circa 1920.

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 Miniature self-portrait, by Louis-Marie Autissier, 1817.

 Des Moines, Iowa USA, photograph by Nina Leen for Life Magazine, 1945.

Femina magazine cover, May 1914. Courtesy Andre Duveen.

Märchenball, Szene um den "Gestiefelten Kater", with Eduard Lang, Clara Lang, Adolf Seder, and Heinrich Lang, photograph by Josef Albert, Munich, 1862.

ND.