Brief Autograph Note Signed from Sir Robert Ker Porter (1777–1842), Painter, Writer, Diplomat.

Brief note in the third person written to a physician

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Autograph note signed in the third person by Sir Robert Ker Porter (1777–1842) to a Dr. Smith, summoning him to attend upon an ill servant. Porter writes, in part: “Sir Robert gave him a blue Pill, the night before last and a dose of Salts the next morn[in]g. but thinks the man has got a Cold.”

Per ODNB online: “In Edinburgh, Robert attracted the notice of Flora Macdonald [Jacobite heroine (1722–1790)], and, in consequence of his admiration for a battle piece in her possession depicting some action in the fighting of 1745, he determined to become a painter of military subjects. In 1790 his mother took him to Benjamin West, who was so impressed by the vigour and spirit of some of his sketches that he procured his admission as a Royal Academy student at Somerset House. He entered the Royal Academy Schools on 18 February 1791, aged thirteen. Porter’s progress was remarkably rapid. In 1792 he received a silver palette from the Society of Arts for a biblical drawing, The Witch of Endor. In 1793 he was commissioned to paint an altarpiece for Shoreditch church; in 1794 he painted Christ Allaying the Storm for the Roman Catholic chapel at Portsea; and in 1798 St John Preaching for St John’s College, Cambridge. In 1799, when he was living in London with his sisters Jane and Anna Maria, at 16 Great Newport Street, Leicester Square (formerly the house of Sir Joshua Reynolds), he became a member of a small club of young artists, known as the Brothers, founded by Louis Francia for the cultivation of Romantic landscape painting. ... Porter also worked on easel-pictures, and in 1801 he exhibited at the Royal Academy… In 1805, however, his restless and energetic nature was encouraged by an invitation from Tsar Alexander I of Russia to paint some vast historical murals for the admiralty in St Petersburg… ...in 1809, there appeared his Travelling Sketches in Russia and Sweden during the Years 1805–1808, in two sumptuous quarto volumes, elaborately illustrated by Porter himself… A man of the most varied attainments, Porter has been justly described as ‘a distinguished British gentleman and diplomat, and artist’..., but is probably now best remembered as an artist.”

Price: $45.00