Arthur Devis
Unable to adapt to later fashionable artistic currents, his commissions declined and his work was largely forgotten after his death until the 20th century revival of interest in the conversation piece.
[3] Not surprisingly, the first work Devis painted on commission, a depiction of a house within its park, also shows his interest in landscape ("Hoghton Tower from Duxon Hill, Lancashire", see below).
[6] Devis was a hard-working craftsman, receiving his greatest number of commissions for portraits between 1748 and 1758, after which he failed to keep abreast of later developments in the work of such artists as Joshua Reynolds and Johann Zoffany.
[7] By 1765, Lord John Cavendish was commenting on a projected portrait of his nephew by Devis: "I am much afraid it will be frightful for I understand, his pictures are all of a sort; they are whole lengths of about 2 feet long & the person is always represented in a genteel attitude, either leaning against a pillar, or standing by a flower pot, or leading an Italian greyhound on a string, or in some other ingenious pose.
"[8] Despite his fading reputation, in 1768 Devis became president of the newly founded Free Society of Artists, where he also exhibited works from 1761 onwards, but he was never admitted to membership of the rival Royal Academy.
By the 1750s the focus was more on a central figure, often leaning with elegant grace against a tree – or, in the case of Philip Howard below, seated on a chair to one side with buildings reduced to details in the distant landscape.
[16] The people grouped in the foreground, displaying all the trappings of leisure, are obviously studio portraits and Devis was not required to visit the site of the unfinished building project.
[17] Another example of judicious concealment is the bucolic background given "Edward Rookes-Leeds and his Family" (c.1763-8), the source of whose income was the industrial workings that occupied the bulk of his estate.
[21] Doubtless much of this was an understood convention of the conversation piece genre; but arising from it is the possibility suggested that one aspect of Devis's practice was to have paintings of figures in such interiors ready prepared in his studio and requiring only the faces to be filled in - with a sliding scale of charges for extra details such as an elaborate carpet or ceramics on a mantelpiece.
In common with other artists of his time such as Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough, Devis possessed a number of articulated lay-figures which could be clothed in the latest fashions and so posed as to save his sitters the inconvenience of frequently visiting his studio.
In other paintings, the globe in the corner of Roger Hesketh's family portrait and the apparatus on display in that of the academic John Bacon FRS (both c. 1742-3), establish that they are men of learning with scientific preoccupations.
In his turn, Marris had for pupil Richard Corbould, who painted miniatures of Devis and his wife for the model tomb commissioned after their deaths by their daughter Ellin.
