Portrait of Alexander Pope

Jean-Baptiste van Loo's 1742 portrait of Alexander Pope is among the most historically significant images of the English poet produced in the eighteenth century. Pope was at this date approaching the end of his life — he died in 1744 — and was universally recognised as the greatest English poet of his age, the author of the Dunciad, the Essay on Man, and the Rape of the Lock. Van Loo painted Pope during his London years, and the commission reflects the high cultural prestige that French painters commanded even in London, where they were both admired and resented as rivals to native talent. Pope was a notoriously difficult sitter because of his physical disability — spinal curvature that had left him small, hunched, and in chronic pain — and portrait painters faced the challenge of conveying intellectual and moral greatness in a body that conventional visual codes associated with weakness. Van Loo's solution, like that of other painters who depicted Pope, was to foreground the face and its expression of alert intelligence while managing the body's unusual proportions.

The portrait concentrates strongly on the face, using warm, directional lighting to model the features with psychological intensity. The body is handled with the careful discretion that portraits of Pope customarily employed, with clothing creating a dignified silhouette. Van Loo's handling of the eyes — lively, penetrating — captures the intellectual fire that observers of Pope consistently recorded.