First Previous 1 OF 10 NextLast

Joseph Wilton

1 of 10 portraits by Charles Grignion

Joseph Wilton, by Charles Grignion, circa 1771 -NPG 4314 - © National Portrait Gallery, London

© National Portrait Gallery, London

Mid-Georgian Portraits Catalogue

Joseph Wilton

attributed to Charles Grignion
circa 1771
5 3/8 in. x 4 1/2 in. (136 mm x 114 mm)
NPG 4314

Inscriptionback to top

Verso: an inscription in a contemporary hand Joseph Wilton/RA; the fragment of a chalk drawing of the shoulders of a dark-haired nude figure with the inscription Julia, and the Ingram collector’s marque above a small A.

This portraitback to top

Sold in 1952 with pencil heads of other Academicians - Charles Catton, Tan che-qua (a visiting Chinese painter), Dr William Hunter, Joseph Nollekens, John Richards, Benjamin West and Richard Yeo - of which those of Hunter and Catton carried a slightly later inscription saying they had been drawn while they were standing to Zoffany [1] for his Royal Academicians completed in 1772. All were then said to be by Grignion (aged twenty in 1772), a feasible but unproven attribution.

Footnotesback to top

1) As recorded by Sir Oliver Millar, The Later Georgian Pictures in the Collection of her Majesty The Queen, 1969, no.1210. A note from the old mount of NPG 4314, presumably by Bruce Ingram, repeats this statement, adding that other drawings ‘from this series are in the possession of the Ashmolean Museum, Gilbert Davis Esq, Iolo Williams Esq, and the Hunterian Society Glasgow’.

Provenanceback to top

Hon Mrs Fitzroy Newdegate, Arbury; Christie’s, 14 March 1952, lot 230 (with seven other portrait drawings by Grignion), bought Colnaghi; Sir Bruce Ingram, from whose executors purchased 1963.


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.

View all known portraits for Joseph Wilton