VOLUME 87 (FORTHCOMING)
A Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings by Charles Jervas
by Caroline Pegum
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Volume 87 of the Walpole Society (Volume LXXXVII), which is currently in preparation, comprises a catalogue raisonné of works by the Irish-born portraitist Charles Jervas (1675–1739) compiled by Caroline Pegum of the Office of Public Works of Ireland.
A successful portraitist, picture dealer, and polyglot, who spent several years in Italy and translated Cervantes’ Don Quixote from Spanish (the translation remains in print), Jervas’s talents were prodigious. During his lifetime, he found success as a portraitist working in the Whig circles of Sir Robert Walpole and was acclaimed by his friend, Alexander Pope, to whom he taught drawing. His reputation has never quite recovered, however, from Horace Walpole’s dismissive verdict that ‘his vanity knew no encomium disproportionate to his merits’.
Pegum’s work for the first time presents a complete corpus of Jervas’s known works, alongside a timely reassessment of his career and the causes for its success. It will doubtless be an indispensable resource for present and future scholars of this fascinating and under-appreciated, period in British art.