File:Portrait of Richard Beard Streatfield of Copford Lichfield (by Arthur Devis).jpg

Portrait of Richard Beard Streatfield of Copford Lichfield, Staffordshire (1705-1770), with a view of Table Bay, Cape Town beyond

indistinctly signed and dated lower right: Art Devis f. / 1746

oil on canvas

The sitter is shown standing on an imaginary spit of land with a view of Table Mountain and Table Bay beyond. This is unique in Devis's work and clearly must allude to Streatfield's mercantile activities, or to a journey he made to the Cape Province. During the eighteenth century The East India Company established a small settlement in the Cape Colony where Company vessels stopped to take on water and supplies en-route to the Indies. It seems likely that Streatfield may have been a member of the Company, and it may also be no coincidence that the view of Table Bay in the background of the portrait is almost certainly derived from George Lambert's painting of The Cape of Good Hope, commissioned by the East India Company in 1731-2. That painting is now in the collection of The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, and Devis may well have either seen the painting itself, which in the 1740s hung in the Directors Court Room in East India House, Leadenhall Street, or seen copies in one or both of John Bowles's engravings on the painting published in 1734 and 1736.

The sitter is shown holding a rare wooden reverse telescope of unusual length. These instruments were sometimes used by the navy to obtain sufficient magnification over long distances. The reversal of the taper meant that they could still be supported by hand. In some occasions, as in this picture, such telescopes could measure as much as 4ft.

Provenance:

By descent in the Streatfield family to Henry D. D. Streatfield, Chiddingstone Manor, Kent;

By whom sold, London, Christie's, 19 November 1965, lot 44B, (identified as the younger brother of Henry Streatfield), to Oscar and Peter Johnson;