Follower of Louis Tocqué, Portrait of a Gentleman with a Carnation, French Oil on Canvas, Mid 18th Century, Gilt Frame

Everything is brown, black and cream except one thing. The carnation sits at the exact centre of the canvas, the only saturated colour in the picture, and the eye finds it before it finds the face.

Oil on canvas, relined, 20 x 16 inches (51 x 41 cm), 24 x 20 inches (61 x 51 cm) framed, unsigned. French School, mid eighteenth century, in a gilt wood frame.

A man of about thirty turns three quarters to the left against a plain brown ground, his powdered wig rolled at the sides and tied at the nape. He wears a dark coat over a white stock, with a deep lace jabot at the throat and a lace ruffle falling over the wrist, and a pink carnation is pinned to the breast. The lace is not drawn but suggested, three or four loaded touches over the dark ground, while the face is worked smooth and slow through half a dozen glazes.

The frame is a gilt wood moulding with a stepped profile and a flat outer band.

Relined and stable on its stretcher, with small paint losses and old restorations visible in the photographs, and small gaps to the gilding of the frame.