This portrait of James Fletcher (1768-1800) by William Wood is an unusual confection.
Aspects of the miniature, such as the background stippling, the treatment of the ivory, the palette and composition, are in Wood’s distinctive style, but the powdered face lacks the textured definition common to Wood and is notably less expressive than his typical work. The brightly painted lips are also something of a departure.
What we are looking at was painted by Wood in collaboration with his sometime assistant Henry Stubble (1755-1806), as a copy of an earlier work by Wood. More confusingly, it is in fact Wood and Stubble’s copy of Wood’s copy of another artist’s work. It is recorded in his fee books as #5938. The portrait tells the story of a young man’s premature death and his grieving mother and wife.
The subject, James Fletcher, died in 1800 at the young age of 32 after serving as physician with the East India Company at Kishangarh, Bengal. Wood’s original commission (recorded as #5855) had come a year later, in 1801, when James’s mother, Lady Fletcher, provided what Wood described as a ‘bad miniature’ of her late son by an unknown artist, and paid him ten guineas to create a likeness.
The following year, in early 1802, a ‘Miss Bent’, perhaps a misrecording of Fletcher’s widow, Hannah Burt, commissioned the copy shown here. It would have been the ideal occasion for Wood to bring in his assistant. There would be no sittings, no preparatory drawings, no interpretation of the subject’s character and no decisions regarding setting or composition. The contents of Wood’s fee books may also have been a help to Stubble, assuming Wood chose to share them, providing a neat record of the paints and techniques the artist had employed.
This copy was begun on June 4th and delivered July 15th, 1802. Wood records it as, “The Head painted by Stubble; on a piece of yellow or rather greenish Ivory… I revised it; & painted the drapery with 325, 202, & 375 Blue…” It is curious that the master artist’s touches are more apparent in the surrounding sky rather than in the more important face.
Henry Stubble was fourteen years William Wood’s senior. He lived at No. 6, Carrington Street, a ten-minute walk from William Wood’s home in Cork Street, and was a personal friend of miniaturist Richard Cosway and his wife. Indeed, the best-known portrait of Cosway is often considered to have been painted by Stubble. A miniature on paper held by the Huntington Library is inscribed verso, ‘Richard Cosway, Esq., R.A., the first of painters, and my particular friends. Drawn in London, by Stubble, 1792–belonging to Maria Calogan’, although the National Portrait Gallery considers it to be a copy of an earlier Cosway self-portrait in its own collection.
Although Wood’s occasional assistant, Stubble was a recognised artist in his own right and exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1785 and 1791. Several Stubble pieces have sold recently, among them the following…
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This is one of an occasional series of posts regarding English portrait miniaturist, William Wood (1769-1809). I welcome all comments (and corrections!).
Selected Sources:
(1) All fee book references relate to the Victoria & Albert Museum. Memorandum of miniatures painted and finished by William Wood, vols. 1-3 (MSL/1944/433-435)
(2) Cynthia at Wigs on the Green. (Of Gentle Demeanour, Henry Stubble, 1792) http://www.wigsonthegreen.co.uk/portrait/of-gentle-demeanour/
(3) National Portrait Gallery. Richard Cosway by Richard Cosway https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portraitExtended/mw01490/Richard-Cosway and The Huntington Library. Object 24.27 https://emuseum.huntington.org/objects/13611/
