1802, Jacques-Louis David, Portrait of Cooper Penrose -- Timken Museum of Art (San Diego)
From the museum label: The Irishman and Quaker Cooper Penrose was a successful timber merchant, who lived much of his life outside Cork. He traveled to Paris in 1802 to commission Jacques-Louis David, the leading painter in France at the time, to paint his portrait. Archives kept by the Timken include copies of correspondence between David and Penrose, which suggest that David believed that the portrait "will be a monument that will attest to Ireland the virtues of a good family man and of the painter who has rendered them." Penrose pressured David to complete the work because he wanted to show it off inside his just-finished grand manor house, Woodhill, that he and his wife spared no expense refurbishing in a neoclassical style. David signed and inscribed the work with his name at lower right. He also dated it formally in Latin, "anno/Xme/republicae Gallicae"—the tenth year of the new French Republican/revolutionary calendar, which David himself helped inaugurate in 1792.
1802, Jacques-Louis David, Portrait of Cooper Penrose -- Timken Museum of Art (San Diego)
From the museum label: The Irishman and Quaker Cooper Penrose was a successful timber merchant, who lived much of his life outside Cork. He traveled to Paris in 1802 to commission Jacques-Louis David, the leading painter in France at the time, to paint his portrait. Archives kept by the Timken include copies of correspondence between David and Penrose, which suggest that David believed that the portrait "will be a monument that will attest to Ireland the virtues of a good family man and of the painter who has rendered them." Penrose pressured David to complete the work because he wanted to show it off inside his just-finished grand manor house, Woodhill, that he and his wife spared no expense refurbishing in a neoclassical style. David signed and inscribed the work with his name at lower right. He also dated it formally in Latin, "anno/Xme/republicae Gallicae"—the tenth year of the new French Republican/revolutionary calendar, which David himself helped inaugurate in 1792.