Man's Head 1680-1745 Jonathan Richardson Sr. British Jonathan Richardson Senior was a leading early eighteenth-century portrait painter who also wrote influential texts on art and connoisseurship and formed an important collection of Old Master drawings. Early in his career he rarely made preparatory studies, but in his fifties he began regularly to portray himself and his son in works that suggest an appreciation for drawing as an aesthetic pursuit. Once he retired from painting, Richardson made such drawings daily. This example may be a lightly sketched self-portrait but could also be a copy.. Man's Head 355622