English School (18th Century) Portrait of Samuel Fairclough unsigned oil on canvas 76 x 63 cm (29 15/16 x 24 13/16 in). framed 85.67 x 73.25 x 2.5 cm. (33 3/4 x 28 11/13 x 1 in.) Footnotes: Provenance Collection of Jonathan Friedman. N.B. In the upper left corner is the coat of arms from the Fairclough (sometimes Faircloth) family, with the inscription 'VIX EA NOSTRA VOCO' (I scarcely call these things our own). Inscribed in the upper right corner is 'H EIKΩN TOY ΘF OY ANΔPOΣ XAPAKTHP' (A Portrait of the Mr. Andros [...]). The present picture is almost certainly based on a 1683 engraving by Frederick Hendrik van Hove, after an unknown artist, of Reverend Samuel Fairclough (Suffolk 1594-Suffolk 1677), held at the National Portrait Gallery (NPD D28835). The present picture is also the mirror image of another known portrait of Reverend Samuel Fairclough, held at Mansfield College, Oxford. Samuel Fairclough was born in Haverhill, England, to the town's vicar. He was educated at Queens' College, Cambridge. After a series of failed rectory assignments, Fairclough was finally assigned to the rectory at Kedington, near his hometown of Haverhill. He studied there under Rev. Samuel Ward (1577-1640), a portrait of whom is also held at Mansfield College and is compositionally very similar to the present picture. He became a well-admired minister there. He was offered and declined a number of prestigious appointments, including to be one of the Westminster Assembly of Divines and a mastership at Trinity College, Dublin. On the left edge of the reverse of the stretcher is the stamp of Thomas Brown (c. 1778-1840), an artists' colorman, that reads 'BROWN HIGH HOLBORN'. Thomas Brown and his son and successor, Thomas Brown, supplied canvases and paints to the artists Benjamin Robert Haydon, David Wilkie, Gilbert Stuart, John Constable, J.M.W. Turner, Edwin Landseer, John Linnell, Samuel Palmer, Charles Robert Leslie, Thomas Lawrence, and John Trumbull, among many others. Brown was active in London, at the address 163 High Holborn, from 1805/6 - 1853, and was active at 260 Oxford St. from 1853-54. Based on the stamp, we can date this particular canvas to between 1805 and 1853. It is possible to further narrow this down if we consider that panel and stretcher impressions such as the present one have only previously been found on pictures dated after 1835. For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com For further information about this lot please visit the lot listing