John Wolcot

1 portrait

© National Portrait Gallery, London

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John Wolcot

by Walter Stephens Lethbridge
watercolour and bodycolour on ivory, circa 1817
4 1/2 in. x 3 3/8 in. (114 mm x 86 mm)
Purchased, 1863
Primary Collection
NPG 156

Sitterback to top

  • John Wolcot (1738-1819), 'Peter Pindar'; physician and satirist. Sitter associated with 8 portraits.

Artistback to top

Linked publicationsback to top

  • Ingamells, John, National Portrait Gallery: Mid-Georgian Portraits 1760-1790, 2004, p. 494
  • Saywell, David; Simon, Jacob, Complete Illustrated Catalogue, 2004, p. 673
  • Walker, Richard, Miniatures: 300 Years of the English Miniature, 1998, p. 99 Read entry

    Dr Wolcot, 'a thick squat man with a large dark flat face, and no speculation in his eye' (William Carr, cited in Dictionary of National Biography), achieved notoriety under the pseudonym 'Peter Pindar', from a series of satirical verses ridiculing the Royal Academy, Dr Johnson, Boswell and especially the royal family and the King himself, whom he delighted to poke fun at as the dotty old 'farmer George'.

    Walter Stephens Lethbridge came from a farming life in Devonshire, took up portrait painting in Canterbury and London, where he exhibited mostly miniatures, till 1821, when he retired to Plymouth. His portrait of 'Peter Pindar', a fellow Devonian, shows the old man in his library, wearing a dressing-gown and unlikely black wig of the type the poet Thomas Campbell used to tear off and fling across the room in fits of feigned fury, to amuse his friends.

Subject/Themeback to top

Events of 1817back to top

Current affairs

Princess Charlotte, only daughter of George, Prince Regent and Caroline of Brunswick, dies in childbirth, prompting widespread mourning.
Seditious Meetings Bill drives democratic societies underground.
Rising depression and discontent; Prince Regent's coach attacked at state opening of Parliament.

Art and science

John Keats begins to write his epic poem Endymion on the Isle of Wight; a rite of passage as a professional poet after deserting his medical career.
John Constable exhibits Flatford Mill, one of his most famous naturalistic landscape paintings, at the Royal Academy
John Rennie's new Waterloo Bridge opens.

International

Journalist William Cobbett flees to America fearing prosecution. Already imprisoned for two years for seditious libel he grew more vehemently pro-reform on his release and reduced the price of his weekly periodical the Political Register to expand its circulation and influence to all classes.
James Monroe is elected President of the United States.

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