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James Alexander Simpson
(circa 1795-1860), Solicitor to the Foundling HospitalSitter in 1 portrait
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Ms Signe Hoffos
15 March 2016, 01:51
The Illustrated London News of 7 March 1936 identified the original painting as 'James Alexander Simpson as a boy', and the sitter as "in after life solicitor to the Foundling Hospital from 1852 to 1860". This James Alexander Simpson was christened in Hackney in 1795; married one Anne Roupell in Queen Square, Bloomsbury, in 1821; and died in Montague Place, Russell Square, in 1860, leaving eight children and an estate of GBP 3000. There are regular references to his appearances as a solicitor in British newspapers from the 1820s onward. He seems a likelier sitter for A.W. Devis than an American lad ten years younger, who would have been about the right age during the last decade of the Napoleonic Wars (not an ideal time for transatlantic recreational travel).