Updated with results below:

This week, a portrait of the Prince Regent, a.k.a. Prinnie and later George IV, is up for sale at Skinner. Here is the chance you’ve been waiting for – to have his mighty visage staring down at you from your library walls! Whatever would Jane Austen say? – she was not, as we know, a big fan of the Prince. [for more information on Austen’s 1815 visit to Carlton House and the Prince Regent’s Librarian, click here.]

Prince of Wales

British School, 18th/19th Century ~ George IV as The Prince of Wales

Auction Details: 

Skinner 2754B European Furniture & Decorative Arts – http://www.skinnerinc.com/auctions/2754B
October 11, 2014 10:00AM, 63 Park Plaza, Boston

Lot 566: British School, 18th/19th Century ~ George IV as The Prince of Wales http://www.skinnerinc.com/auctions/2754B/lots/566

Estimate: $1,000 – $1,500 SOLD for $615.

Description:

British School, 18th/19th Century – George IV as The Prince of Wales

• Unsigned, with labels including one from The Closson Art Galleries, Cincinnati, on the stretcher.
• Oil on canvas, 28 1/4 x 23 3/4 in. (71.5 x 60.5 cm), framed.
• Condition: Lined, retouch, fine craquelure, surface accretions.

N.B. The portrait is somewhat similar in feel to that painted by John Russell, RA, in 1789, now in the collection of the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, which may have been the inspiration for this copy.

Stretcher incised “W.MORRILL/LINER” u.c. bar. Also with a label from Art Conservation & Services, San Francisco, California, on the stretcher. Other period labels on the stretcher are unattributed and variously inscribed with numbers. One more promising label is inscribed “S.Buckly & Co/8-5-21”

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See the full Auction catalogue for a stunning collection of fine silver, snuff boxes, paintings, porcelain, furnishings, and other decorative arts.

And here is the Prince later as George IV and what the caricaturists and his own profligate ways made of him:

A Voluptuary under the horrors of Digestion (1792)
by  James Gillray  [Wikipedia]

c2014 Jane Austen in Vermont