Thomas Paine

Inscriptionback to top

Inscribed verso: No 1/Portt of/Thomas Paine//Aug. Milliere/72 Prince of Wales Road/Kentish Town

This portraitback to top

Millière wrote in 1896 that he had painted NPG 897 ‘nearly twenty years ago ... from an old engraving of the Original Portrait painted by Romney,’ [1] presumably the plate by William Sharp published in 1793. [2] The original Romney portrait remains untraced; [3] according to Conway, it was painted for Dr Thomas Cooper (1759-1840) a Manchester radical, who emigrated to America. [4] It was painted in June and July 1792, when Paine was awaiting trial in London following the publication of The Rights of Man and effigies of him were being burned throughout the country. Paine simply announced that he was ‘very quietly sitting to Mr Romney, the painter’. [5] The sittings had been arranged by his friend (and biographer) Clio Rickman, who considered the portrait ‘perhaps the greatest likeness ever taken by any painter’. [6] Later John Romney declared it ‘one of the finest heads ever produced by pencil', adding that 'if Paine had not been notorious by his mischievous writings, this portrait alone would have rescued his name from oblivion’. [7]
Romney's portrait was also engraved by C. T. Warren 1791, F. Bonneville 1796, A. Easto (head only), T. A. Dean 1830, and A. Krause; a crude bust-length version, reversed, etched by John Kay c.1794, was described as ‘taken from a miniature painted in America, and sent home to the artist by a friend’. [8] Copies were painted in America by J. W. Jarvis in 1803 and C. W. Jarvis in 1857; [9] by Clark Mills (National Gallery Washington) and Bass Otis in 1859 (Independence National Historical Park, PA). [10] A dependant miniature ‘by Romney’, without the hands and with a fur-collared coat, allegedly painted for Outram Henfrey, was offered to the NPG in 1865 and 1894. [11] Two small copies, with an added right hand supporting a book, are recorded in private collections, [12] and a small whole-length extrapolation was with W. W. Bartlett, Brighton, in 1904.

Footnotesback to top

1) Letter of 26 October 1896; NPG archive.
2) Illus. D. A. Cross, A Striking Likeness, The Life of George Romney, 2000, p 171; NPG 897 differs only in the height of the sheet inscribed, by Millière, Rigts [sic] of Man.
3) H. Ward & W. Roberts, Romney, A Biographical and Critical Essay with a Catalogue Rainsonné of his Works, 1904, II, p 115.
4) He emigrated ‘about a hundred years ago’ [i.e. 1797] and became president of South Carolina College; Conway 1897, p 848 (he went on to associate it with an indifferent copy after Romney).
5) Quoted by J. Keane, Tom Paine, 1996, p 341.
6) T. C. Rickman, Life of Thomas Paine, 1819, p 14.
7) Rev. John Romney, Memoirs of the Life and Works of George Romney ... also some particulars of the life of Peter Romney, his Brother, 1830, pp 223-24.
8) A Series of Original Portriats and caricature etchings, by the late John Kay, with biographical sketches and anecdotes, 1842, II, f.p.184.
9) Both listed by M. D. Conway, Thomas Paine, 1892, p 481, in American private collections.
10) M. D. Conway in The Truth Seeker, 29 January 1898, p 71.
11) By members of the Henfrey family; illus. Sir George Scharf's Trustees' Sketch Books, 9/38 (23 March 1865). In 1865 a Trustee had objected to the acquisition as long as he himself remained on the Council.
12) One in a painted oval with the Rights of Man (Dublin collection 1938), the other with Sense, illus. and exhibited Up in Arms, Belfast 1998 (56).

Physical descriptionback to top

Brown eyes, brown, greying hair, brown coat; the papers on the left read: Rigts/of/Man and Common/Sense.

Provenanceback to top

[Nathan; Holyoake]¹ bought in 1891 by Henry Willett² by whom presented 1892.

¹ Millière wrote that his picture was sold ‘along with other rubbish in a lot, by auction, and bought by a Mr Nathan for a triffle [sic]’ (letter of 26 October 1896; NPG archive).
² Who said (letter of 20 April 1892; NPG archive) he had bought it ‘last year’; he had been told it came ‘from one of the Holyoakes who died & treasured it greatly’ (letter of 24 April 1892; NPG archive) - the radical author George Jacob Holyoake (1817-1906, who was twice married) may have been related.

Exhibitionsback to top

Thetford, Guild Hall, 1951.

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