Jane Taylor
1 portrait matching these criteria:
- set matching 'Macdonnell Collection'
© National Portrait Gallery, London
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Jane Taylor
by Unknown artist
charcoal and coloured chalk
7 1/4 in. x 6 7/8 in. (185 mm x 175 mm)
Purchased with help from the Friends of the National Libraries and the Pilgrim Trust, 1966
Reference Collection
NPG D56
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- Jane Taylor (1783-1824), Writer of children's poetry; daughter of Ann and Isaac Taylor. Sitter in 2 portraits.
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Robin Taylor Gilbert
21 February 2019, 17:05
This likeness is utterly unlike, say, the authenticated portrait (by her brother Isaac) of Jane Taylor, the second daughter of the Revd Isaac Taylor (which used to hang in the former Taylor Room in the Guildhall at Lavenham, but which has now, I believe, been relegated to store by the National Trust). She was slight and in poor health for much of her adult life, dying aged 40 in 1824 from breast cancer that had spread to the lungs. This NPG drawing is, I believe, dated 1831 (ie, seven years after the death of that Jane Taylor). It may well be of a lady called Jane Taylor - a common enough name in all conscience - but is there any contemporary or other reliable evidence to associate it with the author of Essays in Rhyme and, of course, of The Star? It is, in my view, especially unfortunate that this drawing has been used to illustrate the article on Jane and her elder sister Ann in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. (Jane Taylor of Lavenham, Colchester and Ongar was the younger sister of my great-great-grandmother.)