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Description
This oil painting (61cm x 78 cm), a half-length portrait of a young man in seventeenth-century dress, has the following inscription on the back: ‘IACO CAPRA ÆTATIS SUAE AN XXII 1618 IF’. It was owned by Rev. William Evans (Wil Ifan), a former Archdruid of Wales, and hung in his home until his death in 1968. It is thought to have been given to him by a lady from Dolgellau who had worked at the manor house of Nannau, near Dolgellau, and the painting is believed to have come originally from there. The lady is believed to have been Wil Ifan’s landlady when he came to Dolgellau to take up his first pastorate, at the English Congregational Chapel, in 1906.
The Rev. William Evans left to study at Oxford in 1908, but maintained his connections with Dolgellau throughout his life, as it had been the home of his wife, Nesta Wyn Edwards. I have not so far succeeded in finding out anything about the identity of the painting’s subject, Iacomo (Jacomo/Giacomo/Jacopo?) Capra, who was apparently 22 in 1618, or of the painter (IF?). It would also be most interesting to learn more about the painting’s possible connections with the Nanney-Vaughan family: could it have been bought on a Grand Tour?
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