William Whiston

Inscriptionback to top

Inscribed upper left: Willm: Whiston/A.M.

This portraitback to top

A reduced version, probably an early copy, of a portrait at Lyndon Hall (the home of his son-in-law, Thomas Barker, where Whiston died), which shows a mole on the right cheek, a book in the left hand and his right raised, as if teaching. [1] It was engraved by G. Vertue 1720 without the artist’s name, which is added in ink in an early 18th-century hand on an example in the NPG and is given as ‘Dna Hoadley’ in a contemporary MS list of Vertue’s plates in the Lewis-Walpole Library. [2] Another copy, apparently after NPG 243, is in Clare College, Cambridge. [3]

Footnotesback to top

1) Exhibited, Beale, Geffrye Museum, 1975, no.45, illus., lent Sir John Conant Bt. Said to have been given by a Miss Barker to the great-grandfather of the present owner of Lyndon in 1845.
2) D. Alexander, ‘George Vertue as an Engraver’, Wal. Soc., LXX, 2008, no.307.
3) J. W. Goodison, Catalogue of the Portraits in Christ’s, Clare and Sidney Sussex Colleges, 1985, pp 67-68, no.139; illus. M. D. Forbes, Clare College, I, 1928, p 152, pl.xii.

Referenceback to top

Piper 1963
D. Piper, Catalogue of the Seventeenth Century Portraits in the National Portrait Gallery 1625-1714, 1963, p 374.

Provenanceback to top

W. Brown of Spur Street, from whom purchased 1867.

Exhibitionsback to top

Third and concluding Exhibition of National Portraits ( ... fortieth year of the reign of George the third to MDCCCLXVII), South Kensington, 1868, no.748.


This extended catalogue entry is from the National Portrait Gallery collection catalogue: John Ingamells, National Portrait Gallery: Later Stuart Portraits 1685–1714, National Portrait Gallery, 2009, 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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