Page 21 - Francis Cotes - A winning end-game
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Fig 5. FRANCIS COTES, Princess Lousa and Princess friends not as classical ‘types’, but dressed for
Caroline Matilde of Denmark, Royal Coll. private theatricals, thoroughly enjoying
themselves. A more serious classical venture was
now and then he even tried out Reynolds’s his almost baroque portrait of the statuesque,
idealised, classical style, but usually with a more Elizabeth Gunning, now Duchess of Hamilton
playful note, as in his full-length double and Argyll, as The Duchess of Hamilton as
portrait, Lady Stanhope and Lady Effingham Venus Queen of Beauty, 1767 (Inverary Castle
as Diana and her Companion, 1765 (Fig. 4. Collection), resting one hand on the pedestal of
York City Art Gallery) showing the two an urn. Here his use of bold green and pinks in
the drapery made the duchess’s weighty, curving
figure stand out against the sombre background.
But however worldly and ambitious he was,
Cotes also understood tenderness and affection.
Although he and his wife Sarah, whom he
married in 1765, had no children themselves,
these qualities shine through his many portraits
of children.
In the late 1760s Cotes achieved the royal
patronage he wanted, producing portraits of the
Princesses and of the Queen. The most moving
of these, painted around the same time as the
Welbys, is the double portrait of Princess
Louisa and her sister Queen Caroline Matilde
of Denmark (Fig. 5. Royal Collection).
Caroline, aged fourteen, is about to be sent
overseas, much against her will, to marry the
young Danish king Christian IV; as she
touches her sister on the shoulder, there is a
feeling of yearning, of knowledge that they
might be separated for years –and in fact Louisa
died of tuberculosis the following year.
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