Beschreibung:

ARTHUR WILLIAM DEVIS (BRITISH 1762-1822)
A DOUBLE PORTRAIT OF TWO BOYS, ONE POINTING TO INDIA ON A GLOBE: A DOUBLE PORTRAIT OF TWO BOYS, PRACTICING ARCHERY
Oil on canvas, a pair
The former inscribed `Miss Kensington No.106' (on the reverse of the frame); and the latter inscribed `Miss Kensington No.105' (on the reverse of the frame)
Each 79.4 x 56.5cm (31¼ x 22 in.) (2)
Provenance:
Private collection, UK
Philips, Son & Neale, 1st December 1969, lot 30
Richard Green, London
Dr Norman Power
Arthur William Devis inherited his talent from his father, the portrait painter Arthur Devis (1712-1787). He led an adventurous life and in 1782 was `appointed Draftsman by a private committee of the East India Company to pursue a voyage around the world' (2) aboard the Antelope. He was wounded by arrows in New Guinea and shipwrecked off the Palau Islands in the Pacific. Devis reached Calcutta in 1785, hoping to make his fortune as a portrait painter. Handsome, charming and generous, he plunged into the extravagant, febrile world of Calcutta society, where East India Company officials lived with all the elegance of Europe and the glamour of the East. One of Devis's first sitters was the Governor-General of Bengal, Warren Hastings and he went on to paint Marquess Cornwallis Receiving the Hostage Prince of Mysore before Seringapatam: and The Finding of the body of Tippoo Sahib, The Sultan of Mysore. Devis returned to England in 1795, intending to publish his series of twenty-six paintings of Indian Manufacturers. He built up his reputation as a portrait painter, often executing commissions for families with connections to India.
He became renowned for portraits of children: his gentle, warm personality put them at their ease. Sydney Pavière, Devis's biographer, comments: 'That he was fond of little children cannot be doubted. He painted them so lovingly and well' (3) . This can be seen in the present pair of portraits of four brothers. The elder pair stand in an interior with a table globe and the younger of the two boys' points to India, making clear the family's connection with that country. The elder boys, engaged in learning about the world, have the gravity of approaching manhood. Their young brothers live still in a world of outdoor play and sunlight. They are depicted practicing archery in the shade of a huge tree, the vastness of which suggests the tropics and is similar to the Banyan Tree in Devis's portrait of Colin Shakespeare, of the Bengal Civil Service (4).
Both portraits are inscribed `Miss Kensington' on the reverse of the frames. It is possible that the boys are members of the Kensington family who are recorded in Madras in the early nineteenth century. For example, Henry Kensington (d.1825) began his career as a Writer (or clerk, the first rung of an East India Company career) in 1808 and rose to be Registrar to the Provincial Court, Southern Division by 1822 . There may well have been earlier generations of the family living in India. Devis visited Madras in 1793.
1. Sydney H Pavière, The Devis Family of Painters, Leigh-on-Sea 1950, p.102
2 Ibid p.104
3 Ibid p.113
4 Ibid p.114, no.134, plate 46