A Member of the Puxley Family

During the 1820s, John Linnell relied on society portraiture to provide and income to support his growing family. He later recalled that he had painted portraits to live but lived to paint poetical landscapes. In 1826 he was commissioned by the copper magnate John Lavallin Puxley of Dunboy Castle, County Cork, Ireland, to paint pendant portraits of two of his daughters for the fee of 75 guineas each. They were exhibited with the Royal Academy in 1826. Linnell depicts the sisters as fashionably dressed young women framed by classical architecture; yet, unsurprisingly, he devotes a lavish attention to the landscapes behind the sitters. Painted in a freer manner, with the greens and blues of earth and sky extending into the distance with dramatic chiaroscuro, Linnell's treatment of these landscapes stands in stark contrast to his handling of the sisters and the shallow spaces they occupy.

Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016