Attributed to Dominicus van der Smissen,
 
German 1704-1760-
 
Portrait of...

Attributed to Dominicus van der Smissen,

German 1704-1760-

Portrait of Richard Ripley, half-length, turned to the right;

oil on canvas, signed, inscribed and dated 'Richard Ripley, Esqre. / Eldest son of Thomas Ripley, Esqre. / Comptroller of the Board of Works. / D. VanderSmissen pinxit 1745.' (on an old label attached to the reverse of the canvas), 76 x 63.5 cm.

Provenance: Private Collection, UK.

Note: The son of a wealthy merchant, Van der Smissen was born and grew up in Altona in Hamburg. He received his artistic training as a student of the painter Balthasar Denner (1685-1749), whose sister Catharina he married in 1730. He later lived and worked in Dresden, Brunswick, Amsterdam and London. Today his paintings hang in several museums including the Hamburger Kunsthalle, the Amsterdam Museum, and the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum in Brunswick.

Richard Ripley (1724-1780) was the eldest son of the celebrated Yorkshire-born architect Thomas Ripley (1682-1758) who is said to have walked to London, as a young boy, to seek his fortune. The elder Ripley purportedly owed his advancement in life to the patronage of Sir Robert Walpole, one of whose servants he married. His notable achievements include his rebuilding of the London's Custom House in 1788, which had been destroyed by fire in 1715, and his appointment in 1721 as Chief Carpenter to all his majesty's works and buildings in England, in succession to Grinling Gibbons. He also jointly published Plans and Elevations of Houghton [Hall] with William Kent and Isaac Ware, and worked on Wolterton House in Norfolk, the Admiralty in Whitehall, and the interior and roof of the chapel at Greenwich Hospital. On 8 May 1726 he became comptroller of the Board of Works in succession to Sir John Vanbrugh, and held this appointment until 1738. His son Richard, the subject of the present work, inherited a considerable fortune upon his fathers death.