Sir Henry Irving

1 portrait of Sir Henry Irving

© National Portrait Gallery, London

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Sir Henry Irving

by Window & Grove
albumen cabinet card, 1895
5 5/8 in. x 4 in. (142 mm x 101 mm) image size
Purchased, 1983
Photographs Collection
NPG x22245

Sitterback to top

Artistback to top

  • Window & Grove (active 1872-1933), Photographers. Artist or producer associated with 168 portraits.

This portraitback to top

A photograph show Irving in later life, having achieved fame and honour. He wears the robes of the Honorary Doctorate conferred on him at Trinity College, Dublin in 1892. Lawrence Alma-Tadema and Frederic Lord Leighton also received honours on this occasion but the crowd's greatest enthusiasm was reserved for Irving. He would later receive honorary degrees from Cambridge (1898) and Glasgow (1899).

Events of 1895back to top

Current affairs

Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest is first performed, the same year that he is imprisoned for homosexual offences following accusations made against him by the eighth Marquess of Queensbury. Whilst in prison, Wilde wrote De Profundis, a letter addressed to his former lover, Queensbury's son Lord Alfred Douglas, attacking him for his role in Wilde's imprisonment.
Prime Minister Lord Rosebery resigns and is succeeded by Salisbury.

Art and science

The Lumiere brothers hold the first public screening of movies at Paris's Salon Indien du Grand Café, featuring ten short films recorded with Leon Bouly's cinematographe device, recognised as the birth of cinema as a commercial medium.
Henry Irving, the celebrated actor and theatre manager, becomes the first actor to receive a knighthood.

International

In South Africa, prompted by the growing unrest of unfranchised British immigrants (Uitlanders) drawn to the Transvaal by the discovery of gold, Rhodes and other members of the South African mining community begin to plot the republic's overthrow. As a result, the disastrous Jameson Raid takes place, carried out on Paul Kruger's Transvaal Republic by Leander Starr Jameson and his Rhodesian and Bechuanaland policemen: it fails to bring about an Uitlander uprising.

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