Joseph Priestley

1 portrait matching these criteria:

- subject matching 'Bronze'

Joseph Priestley, by Thomas Halliday, 1804 -NPG 175b - © National Portrait Gallery, London

© National Portrait Gallery, London

Mid-Georgian Portraits Catalogue

Joseph Priestley

by Thomas Halliday
1804
2 in. (51 mm) diameter
NPG 175b

Inscriptionback to top

Obverse inscribed: JOSEPH PRIESTLEY. LLD.F.R.S.:AC.IMP.PETROP.R.PARIS.HOLM. TAURIN.ITAL. HARLEM.AUREL.MID.PARIS.CANTAB.AMERIC.ET PHILAD.SOCIUS.1 and on the truncation: HALLIDAY F.
Reverse inscribed with the text of a tablet composed by Dr Samuel Parr for the New Meeting House at Birmingham: THIS TABLET IS CONSECRATED TO THE MEMORY OF THE REV.JOSEPH PRIESTLEY ... UNITARIAN CHAPEL/BIRMINGHAM2

1 Elliptically referring to his membership of the Academies in St Petersburg, Paris, Stockholm, Turin, Haarlem, Orleans, Cambridge and Philadelphia.
2 Quoted in full by H. C. Bolton, ‘The Likenesses of Priestley in oil, ink, marble and metal’, in Scientific Correspondence of Joseph Priestley, 1892, p 189.

This portraitback to top

Another bronze example is in the NPG reference collection (D7056). The medal was restruck in 1904 to mark the centenary of Priestley’s death. Halliday, a Birmingham resident and a friend of Priestley, also made a small bust (copy in Dr Williams’s Library) of which several plaster copies were made. [1]

Footnotesback to top

1) H. C. Bolton, ‘The Likenesses of Priestley in oil, ink, marble and metal’, in Scientific Correspondence of Joseph Priestley, 1892, p 188.

Referenceback to top

Bolton 1892
H. C. Bolton, ‘The Likenesses of Priestley in oil, ink, marble and metal’, in Scientific Correspondence of Joseph Priestley, 1892, p 191.

Brown 1980
L. Brown, A Catalogue of British Historical Medals 1760-1960: The Accession of George III to the Death of William IV, 1980, no.563.

Provenanceback to top

Presented by James Yates (see NPG 175) 1864.


This extended catalogue entry is from the out-of-print National Portrait Gallery collection catalogue: John Ingamells, National Portrait Gallery: Mid-Georgian Portraits 1760-1790, National Portrait Gallery, 2004, 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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