The London Lounge

I hope that fellow Loungers will be able to help me out of a quandry.

My father is to celebrate an important birthday early next year. I´d like to be able to present him with an as exact as possible copy of the portrait of one of his favorite ancestors (he has long had a small photograph of the portrait). The original portrait was painted in oils, on linen, in about 1760 and is a three-quarter length image of (should it matter) a well- but not elaborately dressed* man facing the viewer; it measures about 83 centimeters by 70 (yes, a bit broad). Should it matter, the original portraitist was Johann Heinrich Tischbein the Elder.

Here´s the problem: I can´t find a good copyist -- at the least, not in an affordable range. One or two here, in Buenos Aires, could do the work for a decent price, but no one could ever mistake the result for the original.** A copyist in England has been suggested, appears to do very good work, quite probably acceptable in quality, but might charge close to ten thousand dollars. So . . . has any Lounger solid knowledge of a capable yet less costly copy painter? Or do such artists no longer exist?


*What more could we expect of a Lounger´s ancestor?

**The original is securely housed in a museum in Europe, and I´ve no intention of pulling off a midnight raid to switch paintings. I want only to please my father, and that, only with the initial impression of the original.

A wonderful idea for a present.

RWS, I don't know whether your time frame or access to information about the original would permit this route, but it might be worth your while to inquire at one of the conservation training programs whether a student or aspiring student (intern) of paintings conservation might be able/willing to take this on. You have the Fogg Museum nearby, which takes interns, and the Boston MFA paintings conservation dept. might also be able to refer, as might the Gardner. The graduate programs in the U.S. are at NYU, Winterthur (Univ. of Delawre), and Buffalo State (SUNY). Back in the late '70s I visited the Hamilton Kerr Institute at Cambridge (UK) and a set part of the training program was copying historical paintings (duplicating the materials and techniques) from the Fitzwilliam and elsewhere. U.S. training practices differ but you might find a likely referral from one of these sources.

Presumably, you will need a facsimile of the original from the museum for the copyist - it just occurs to me that, these days, such facsimiles can be very well done indeed, even to the extent of texture - although it is not quite the same as an actual oil copy, nevertheless, it would be a perfect reproduction - and a big step up from a small photograph.
NJS

I thank all for their suggestions. Couch's seem best suited to my needs, and I'll try to obtain a good copy through one of these training programs.