Richard Cobden

Inscriptionback to top

Incised (right hand side of base): T. Woolner. S^c/LONDON. 1866. and (front of base): RICHARD COBDEN

This portraitback to top

This is a replica. According to Amy Woolner, the original bust, also posthumous, was retained by Mrs Cobden, and is probably the marble of 1866 now in the Brighton Art Gallery (identical with the NPG bust), presented by Henry Willett, 1874. A third version is in Westminster Abbey. The bust, formerly in the collection of the Emperor Napoleon III, may have been a separate type, as it was executed in 1865 (both the Brighton and NPG busts are dated 1866); Woolner records Napoleon's acceptance in a letter to Mrs Tennyson of 27 July 1865. In a letter of 16 July 1866 (NPG archives), Mrs Cobden wrote of the NPG bust: 'considered by me and my family a most excellent likeness of my late Husband'.

Referenceback to top

Woolner 1917
Amy Woolner, Thomas Woolner: his Life in Letters (1917), pp 262 n, 339.

Provenanceback to top

Commissioned by the sitter's widow, Mrs C. A. Cobden, and presented by her, 1868.


This extended catalogue entry is from the out-of-print National Portrait Gallery collection catalogue: Richard Ormond, Early Victorian Portraits, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1973, and is as published then. For the most up-to-date details on individual Collection works, we recommend reading the information provided in the Search the Collection results on this website in parallel with this text.

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