Marcellus Laroon the Elder

Dr Edward Peart (c.1756-1824) (L.892)

with Martyn Gregory, London,

where acquired by Diane A. Nixon

Marcellus Laroon’s father was a French painter who had settled in the Hague. His mother may have been English and after training under his father in the Netherlands, he moved to England in around 1670. Settling first in Yorkshire, by 1674 he was living at Bow Street, Covent Garden and he was soon working as an assistant within Sir Godfrey Kneller’s studio. In time he gained a reputation in his own right, particularly following the publication, in 1687, of his The Cryes [sic] of the City of London, a series of seventy-four engravings depicting London’s street vendors.

The present drawing can be compared to a group of four drawings that were sold at Sotheby’s, London in 2008 and also to a drawing in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge that depicts a servant.¹ In his 1966 catalogue, the Laroon scholar, Richard Raines, described the artist as ‘a skillful, accomplished and vigorous draughtsman’ and these works, in particular, as being drawn on the ‘backs of roughly made playing cards.’²

^1.Sale, London, Sotheby's, 4 December 2008, lot 117; R. Raines, Marcellus Laroon, London 1966, p. 15, fig. 11

^2.Raines, op.cit., p. 13