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Portrait of a Gentleman

[creator]: Watt, George Fiddes, RSA · 1873-1960

Portrait of a Gentleman

An identically titled painting "Portrait of a Gentleman" was exhibited at the RSA in 1924 catalogue number 137 and not for sale. This may have been…

An identically titled painting "Portrait of a Gentleman" was exhibited at the RSA in 1924 catalogue number 137 and not for sale. This may have been the same piece as the Diploma Work. Osmund Bullock responding to the Art Detective Discussion on ArtUK in 2020-07 posted the following observations regarding the sitter's dress; "Another point of note from the DNB is that Gibb was known for sartorial eccentricity, wearing a tweed suit to the office in the 1890s. This is much bolder than it sounds to modern ears - for a gentleman the distinction between appropriate 'town' and 'country' dress was really 'de rigeur'. When I first saw the portrait I was very surprised by the brown velvet jacket & waistcoat and strange neck-tie arrangement - I quite genuinely thought the sitter must be either American/Continental, or at least a very Bohemian Brit."

Keiran Owens, as part of the same thread posted the following regarding the circumstances by which the portrait might have come about; "Watt's connect to Gibb might have come through the railway world. On the 26th August 1903 Watt married Jane Isabella Grant Willox, an art teacher at Peterhead Academy and the youngest daughter of William Willox of Park, Lonmay, a farmer in the Buchan area of Aberdeenshire. Jane's older brother William Willox (1857 - 1828) was a noted railway engineer, and had been Chief Engineer of the Metropolitan Railway. This is just a conjecture, but I hope a not unreasonable one. Watt's portrait of Charles Colin MacRae, JP, Chairman, Railway Debenture and General Trust Company, is also to be found on ArtUK. He also painted Sir Charles Bine Henshaw, Chairman of the Caledonian Railway Company in 1913. A good biographical overview of Watt's life, from the ODNB, can be read here: https://www.sjcarchives.org.uk/institutional/index.php/g-fiddes-watt".

Pieter van der Merwe continuing the thread as to the genesis of the painting also posted; "The other curiosity is what the circumstances of the portrait were. Gibb must have sat for it but who was the commissioner, and even if Watt asked him to do so (i.e. perhaps because they knew each other, though I have no idea if they did) what was his intention for the result? It doesn't look like a picture any commissioner -be it Gibb or anyone else - might have had reason to reject, or the sort of thing one would expect to sell to an unconnected third party on exhibition; and if conceived as a Scottish artist's gift of a distinguished Scot to a Scottish institution, then it's far from clear it was, given it did not go expressly and quickly to the RSA on that basis. Other places (e.g Aberdeen University as Gibb's alma mater or the Scottish national collection) might also have been more likely destinations if that was the original aim. That aspect may now simply be unanswerable."

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