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Lucie, Lady Duff Gordon

3 of 36 portraits by Henry Wyndham Phillips

© National Portrait Gallery, London

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Lucie, Lady Duff Gordon

by Henry Wyndham Phillips
oil on canvas, 1851
36 1/8 in. x 28 in. (917 mm x 711 mm)
Given by (Ottiwell Henry) Gordon Waterfield, 1983
Primary Collection
NPG 5584

Sitterback to top

Artistback to top

  • Henry Wyndham Phillips (1820-1868), Painter. Artist or producer associated with 36 portraits, Sitter in 5 portraits.

This portraitback to top

In this portrait she looks in good health, but even by its completion she was already wasted by the consumption that was to kill her.

Linked publicationsback to top

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  • Birkett, Dea; Morris, Jan (foreword), Off the Beaten Track: Three Centuries of Women Travellers, 2004 (accompanying the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from 7 July to 31 October 2004), p. 18
  • Saywell, David; Simon, Jacob, Complete Illustrated Catalogue, 2004, p. 188
  • Simon, Jacob, The Art of the Picture Frame: Artists, Patrons and the Framing of Portraits in Britain, 1997 (accompanying the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from 8 November 1996 - 9 February 1997), p. 73, 170 Read entry

    Gilt compo on pine, mitred and pinned with corner blocks, the sight slip and the inner and outer hollows water gilt, the outer one burnished the inner one perhaps regilt in oil on a yellow ground. 5 3⁄ 4 inches including 1⁄ 2 inch slip.

    Henry Wyndham Phillips painted this portrait of his close friend, the author Lady Duff-Gordon, as a gift to her husband while he was convalescing at their home. His frame style is in marked contrast to the massive frames favoured by his father, Thomas Phillips. Running leaf-and-berry patterns of late seventeenth-century origins were particularly popular in the mid-nineteenth century, often as here with a very open pattern of leaves and an added sight slip. A similar frame can be found on H. W. Phillips's portrait of David Livingstone, painted in 1857 (Private Collection).

  • Simon, Robin, The portrait in Britain and America : with a biographical dictionary of portrait painters, 1680-1914, 1987, p. 219 number 183

Linked displays and exhibitionsback to top

Events of 1851back to top

Current affairs

A population census is taken of all the people living in Britain, recording details about every householder on the night of March 30. This census greatly extends the fields of the 1841 census, being the first to record full details of individuals' birth locations, exact age, marital status, and details of disability, thus making it a valuable tool for demographers and genealogists. The census was made open for public inspection in 1912.

Art and science

The Great Exhibition is held in London,at the Crystal Palace, especially designed by Sir Joseph Paxton. The international exhibition was designed to showcase the best in science, art and industry. it attracted millions of visitors.
Lizzie Siddal poses for John Millais's painting Ophelia.
Hermann von Helmotz invents the ophthalmoscope, making it possible for doctors to examine within a patient's eye.

International

Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, President of the French Republic, stages a coup d'état, successfully dissolving the French National Assembly without having the constitutional right to do so. Now the sole ruler of France, he re-establishes universal suffrage, previously abolished by the Assembly and becomes 'Napoléon III, Emperor of the French'.

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