To view all current artworks for sale visit philipmould.com



This expressive portrait, which has recently emerged from a private collection in Guernsey, is a rare example of a work on paper by the portrait miniaturist Andrew Plimer.

Due to its larger scale, it allows us an exciting glimpse into Plimer’s abilities as a draftsman, an insight which can sometimes be difficult to glean through studying his smaller portrait miniature works. The composition, which shows the sitter almost full-face and positioned contra-posto, has the dynamicity and flow more in keeping with a larger work in oils, and this is perhaps a scarce example of Plimer attempting to break into the more established market for larger works, which was still by this point dominated by the likes of Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830). This would make sense, as it has been suggested that by the 1820s (this work is dated 1826) Plimer was beginning to look further afield for work – perhaps due to the ever-increasing competition amongst his peers in London – and he is known to have travelled to Cornwall, Devon and also to Wales and Scotland.

Born and Shropshire and apprenticed to a clockmaker, Andrew and his brother Nathaniel purportedly ran away, arriving in London in 1781 where Andrew found employment as a servant in the household of Richard Cosway. Whilst working for Cosway, who by this point was a highly regarded portrait miniaturist, Plimer took lessons in painting, establishing a practice of his own a few years later in 1785. By the next year Plimer was exhibiting at the Royal Academy from an address in Golden Square, then a fashionable part of London, where he appears to have remained until 1810.