Louis François Roubiliac

A Florentine, Andrea Soldi (c.1703-1771) came to England c.1736, when British portraiture still owed much to the tradition of artists like Sir Godfrey Kneller and Sir Peter Lely. The arrival of Soldi's European style led to a fresher and more informal portrayal of sitters, and Soldi work was in high demand amongst such important personages as the Dukes of Beaufort and Manchester. However, Soldi's success amongst such aristocratic patrons was soon to decline, when in 1744 his extravagant spending landed him in debtors' prison. His contemporary, George Vertue, recorded that Soldi "was willing to be thought a Count or Marquis, rather than an excellent painter - such idle vanitys has done him no good." Thereafter Soldi began to paint largely for the aspiring middle classes, including the sculptor Louis François Roubiliac, one of the finest working in England in the first half of the eighteenth century, and the subject of the Dulwich portrait. Painted in 1751, Soldi's portrait captures the sculptor at work on a preparatory model of a figure of Charity for a monument to the Duke of Montagu in the church of Warkton, Northamptonshire.