James Francis Maubert
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The sitter is the son of Bainbrigg Buckeridge the celebrated early English art historian.
This enchanting portrait by Maubert is decorated with his trademark flowers and distinctive flowing drapery. His sitter's ruddy cheeked complexion, her delicate wrists and finely posed hands are expertly portrayed to accentuate her youth and elegance. Maubert's pictorial signature, a sprig of honeysuckle, appears at the bottom right of the subject's basket of intricately painted flora.
Maubert was much praised by contemporaries not only for his ''skilfull, well dispos''d & natural'' reproductions of ''fruits, flowers and draperies'' but for his well-honed ability to ''Paint from the life''(1). The son of French Huguenots, Maubert is said to have been born in Dublin. Although he studied under Gaspar Smitz, his stylistic traits demonstrate the influence of Kneller and Dahl. During his life the artist produced an impressive series of paintings of poets, each ''mightily'' adorned ''with flowers & Hony suckles ''(2).
(1) The Walpole Society, ''Vertue Notebooks'', vol. III, p. 28.
(2) Ibid. vol. IV, p. 120.