Can you help identify the sitter of this 1915 portrait?
Unknown man, by Richard Jack, 1915
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I am trying to source the sitter of this portrait by Richard Jack. The picture is dated 1915 and clearly depicts a well-to-do gentry type, typical of many of Jack’s sitters. It is done in his studio, as the chair features in several of his paintings. Jack, I think, is an accomplished artist who moved to Canada soon after this was painted and became their official war artist. I haven’t come across any studio books or references to portraits in the RA.
Comments
The model surely looks like Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937), nuclear physicist and winner of a Nobel Prize. He worked at McGill University (Montreal, Canada) until 1907, before moving to Manchester. He had many portraits done. (But the model might look older than a 44 year-old man…)
I don’t know what you mean by “I haven’t come across any … references to portraits in the RA”. Jack, an Associate of the R.A. from 1914 and a full Academician from 1920, exhibited at the Royal Academy almost every single year from 1893-1939 (and a couple of times after the War). Many or most of the works were portraits, and in 1915 he showed a portrait of “Colonel G. S. Bird, D.S.O.”, as well as one of “Lieut.-Col. Woodwark” the following year. Since your portrait looks *exactly* like an army colonel, I would suggest you investigate these two men…I can’t do it all for you! Oh, all right, one hint: Woodwark, at least, is quite easy to find, as he was briefly an M.P. in the early 1920s.