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James Wolfe

6 of 26 portraits of James Wolfe

© National Portrait Gallery, London

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James Wolfe

by Harold Lee-Dillon, 17th Viscount Dillon, after a drawing attributed to Sir Harvey Smyth, Bt
pencil on tracing paper, circa 1860-1884
7 3/4 in. x 5 3/4 in. (197 mm x 146 mm)
Given by Harold Lee-Dillon, 17th Viscount Dillon, 1884
Primary Collection
NPG 713a

Sitterback to top

  • James Wolfe (1727-1759), General; conqueror of Quebec. Sitter associated with 26 portraits.

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This portraitback to top

This drawing is a tracing by the Hon. Harold Dillon, later 17th Viscount Dillon, of the profile attributed to 'Harvey Smith', i.e. Sir Hervey Smyth (1734-1811), traditionally believed to have been made in the field before Wolfe's death and thereafter the source of the most popular image of the sitter. Dillon may have made the tracing a few years before giving it to the Gallery in 1884. More detailed information on this portrait is available in a National Portrait Gallery collection catalogue, John Kerslake's Early Georgian Portraits (1977, out of print).

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Events of 1860back to top

Current affairs

An early feminist movement, The Society for Promoting the Employment of Women is founded by Adelaide Anne Proctor, Emily Faithfull, Helen Blackburn, Bessie Parks, Emily Davies, Barbara Bodichon, and Jessie Boucherett.
The Florence Nightingale Training School for Nurses opens at St Thomas's Hospital, in London, funded from the testimonial fund collected for Nightingale following her war services, and helping to establish nursing as a profession.

Art and science

William Morris and new wife Jane Burden move into the Red House, near Bexleyheath, Kent. The house, designed by Philip Webb, represents Morris's principle in interior design, that no object should be in a house that is not beautiful.
Ford Madox Brown paints The Last of England, showing a boat of emigrants leaving England under desperate circumstances, inspired by the emigration of the Pre-Raphaelite Thomas Woolner to Australia in 1852.

International

Italian unification continues as the Treaty of Turin brings much of Northern Italy under nationalist leader Cavour's control, who cedes Savoy and Nice to France. Garibaldi siezes the opportunity to invade Marsala in Sicily with his army of 1,000 redshirts, proclaiming himself dictator in the name of Victor Emmanuel II.
Republican Abraham Lincoln becomes President of the US, with only 39% of the popular vote.

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