Lot Details
Lot 24
Sir Peter Lely and Studio
Portrait of Dr. John Fell, Dean of Christ Church College and Bishop of Oxford (1625-1686)
Oil on canvas
30 x 25 inches (76.2 x 63.5 cm)
Provenance:
Private collection, New York
Dr. John Fell, best known today as the subject of the famous rhyme:
I do not like thee, Dr. Fell
The reason why I cannot tell
But this I know and know full well,
I do not like thee, Dr. Fell.
Dr. Fell was a royalist clergyman who fought in the army of Charles I in the English Civil War. He was also a distiguished classics scholar, who after the Stewart Restoration became one of the founders of the Oxford University Press. The lines associated with him were a joking parody of a Latin epigram (1.32) by the Roman poet Martial:
Non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere quare.
Hoc tantum possum dicere: non amo te
(I do not love you, Sabidius; I can't say why/This however I can say: I do not love you).
C
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