Luke Fildes

Inscriptionback to top

Signed in ink lower right: ‘Hy.F’;
inscr. in ink top left: ‘Luke Fildes R.A.’;
and in ink at bottom centre: ‘The mystery of Edwin Drood’.

This portraitback to top

Sitter and artist were fellow members of the Savage Club,[1] and this drawing may have been done there or at a comparable gathering. Furniss does not, however, mention Fildes in any of his memoirs.

The sitter’s accessories allude to his reputation as a ‘black and white’ artist, as does the inscription, marking Fildes’s rise to fame with illustrations to Dickens’s unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870). Though the drawing could date from this era, the inscriptions cannot be earlier than 1887, the year Fildes was elected RA.

See NPG collection 3337–3535, 3554–3620

Dr Jan Marsh

Footnotesback to top

1) See ‘All known portraits, By other artists, 1890’ for A Savage Club Saturday Night by W.H. Bartlett, where both men are pictured.

Physical descriptionback to top

Half-length, near-profile to right, in evening dress, holding pen and illustration representing Edwin Drood.

Conservationback to top

Conserved, 1980.

Provenanceback to top

The artist; his sons, from whom purchased (through Theodore Cluse), April 1947

View all known portraits for Sir (Samuel) Luke Fildes

View all known portraits for Harry Furniss