John Thomlinson and His Family

CC0 Public Domain Designation

Painting and Sculpture of Europe

1745

Arthur Devis
English, 1712–1787

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist: Arthur Devis
Title: John Thomlinson and His Family
Place: England (Artist's nationality)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1745
Medium: Oil on canvas
Inscriptions: Inscribed at lower left: ADevis fe 1745
Dimensions: 60.9 × 101.9 cm (24 × 40 1/8 in.)
Credit Line: Joseph and Helen Regenstein Foundation Fund
Reference Number: 1956.130
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/2169/manifest.json

A.S. Turberville, ed., Johnson’s England: An Account of the Life and Manners of His Age, vol. 2, Oxford, 1933, ill. opp. p. 154.
Sydney H. Pavière, “Biographical Notes on the Devis Family of Painters,” Walpole Society 25 (1936-37), p. 121, no. 4, pl. 41b.
“The Devis Exhibition: Eighteenth-Century English Painting,” Illustrated London News 190 (20 March 1937), p. 503 (ill.).
Wilmarth Sheldon Lewis, Three Tours through London in the Years 1748, 1776, 1797, New Haven, 1941, ill. opp. p. 20.
Art News 47 (June 1948), p. 3 (ill.).
Sydney H. Pavière, The Devis Family of Painters, Leigh-on-Sea, 1950, pp. 34, 57, no. 131, pl. 1.
Sacheverell Sitwell, “The World of Arthur Devis,” Saturday Book 12 (1952), p. 96 (ill.).
Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings in The Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection, Chicago, 1961, p. 126.
Ellen Gates D’Oench, “Arthur Devis (1712–1787): Master of the Georgian Conversation Piece,” Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1979, pp. 71, 407, 419–21, 435, no. 152, fig. 55.
Susan Wise and Malcolm Warner, French and British Paintings from 1600 to 1800 in The Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Collection (Chicago, 1996), pp. 212–14, ill.

Preston, Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Work by Lancashire Artists, 1937, no. 4.
London, Arthur Tooth and Sons, Recent Acquisitions, 1948, no. 2.
New Haven, Yale Center for British Art, The Conversation Piece: Arthur Devis and His Contemporaries, 1980, no. 13, cat. by Ellen Gates D’Oench.

By descent from the sitters to Major Henry Howard, 34 Nevern Square, London, to at least 1937 [Pavière 1936/7]; offered for sale, Christie’s, London, 18 December 1931, lot 80, bought-in. Arthur Tooth and Sons, Ltd., London, by 1948 [see Art News 1948 and New Haven 1980]; sold to the Art Institute, 1956.

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.