Portrait of an artist (self portrait), 1819 (oil on canvas)

signed with initials and indistinctly dated 'B.D. 181.' (lower right), with exhibition number pasted lower left, with painted and chalked inscriptions 'Royal Academy 1819' on the stretcher Exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1819, this subsequently unpublished picture, which has remained in the family of the artist until now, is the earliest of Duterrau's three extant self-portraits, portraying the artist at 52. The other two (the 1835 portrait sold Christie's Sydney, 1 October 1974, lot 10, and the variant finished in 1837, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, for which see E. Buscombe, Artists in early Australia and their Portraits, Sydney, 1978, p.321, nos 28/1 P. and 28/1a P.) were both painted in Van Diemen's Land and show the artist, then in his late sixties, holding a portfolio of engravings ('Raffaelle's Cartoon and School of Athens'). The portfolio refers to his mission, as broadcast in a series of lectures on the theme of the School of Athens, given at the Hobart Town Mechanics Institute through the 1830s and 1840s, to promote the arts and their civilising influence in the colony