Evert Ploeg painted this portrait of John Schaeffer AO (1941–2020) for the 2014 Archibald Prize. A businessman and philanthropist, Schaeffer built a small cleaning business into an enterprise employing more than 20,000 staff, while also becoming a major art collector and benefactor. Ploeg said that he felt an affiliation with his sitter through their shared Dutch heritage and love of figurative art. He chose Schaeffer's home as the setting for the work, so that he could show him 'immersed in his art'. While the reclining bronze nude in foreground is a work by the American sculptor Cyrus Dallin, other artworks included in the portrait confirm Schaeffer's famously great taste for nineteenth-century British art, especially the work of the Pre-Raphaelites: over his left shoulder is a portrait of artist Frederic Leighton by his devoted friend, George Frederic Watts; beneath that work is a small bust by Thomas Brock, the English sculptor who created Leighton's tomb. In the distant background is a drawing of Joan of Arc by Henry Wallis.
Purchased with funds provided by Harold Mitchell AC
© Evert Ploeg/Copyright Agency, 2023
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