Early Georgian Portraits Catalogue

James Wolfe (1727-1759), General; conqueror of Quebec

Wolfe became famous only in death and the iconography ever since has been bedevilled by spurious and doubtful items. A list of ad vivum or immediately posthumous portraits was completed in 1959 [1] to which the one major addition is the bust by Wilton acquired by the NPG in 1964 (NPG 4415).

A head to the left by an unknown and not very skilled hand, still with the Warde family at Squerryes Court was painted, according to tradition, c.1744 [2] for the sitter's boyhood friend General George Warde (1725-1803). [3] The portrait is almost certainly the source of NPG 1111 as also of those by Highmore and Benjamin West (see below). There is a strong tradition supported by extrinsic evidence that from at least 1777 to 1822 the powdered wig in the Squerryes portrait was over-painted red in imitation of the natural colour of Wolfe's hair. [4] A posthumous portrait by West signed and dated 1777 shows Wolfe seated with his left elbow on a plan of Blenheim and a plan of Bergen Op Zoom in his right hand; The hair is red. The artist's receipt on the back of the portrait reads 'Received of Genl. Warde Twenty nine pounds eight shillings, for a small picture of Genl. Wolfe when a Boy with one of Mr. Warde as a companion. Jany. 21st 1778 ...'. Both portraits are still at Squerryes Court. The miniature at Quebec House, c.1822, by an unknown artist, also shows red hair. [5] A head and shoulders acquired in 1932 by the Public Archives of Canada, Ottawa from the Scobell Armstrong family, also to the left with a hat tucked under his left arm, was sketched by Scharf in 1858. [6] An inscription painted on the back states that it was executed by Highmore c.1742 for the sitter's friend and tutor the Rev. Samuel Francis Swinden (d. 1764), [7] and was the only portrait for which Wolfe ever sat. There is no contemporary evidence that Highmore ever had an independent sitting nor any mention of a portrait in Wolfe's or Swinden's lifetime, or in the latter's will, proved October 1764. The inscription, according to Miss Armstrong in 1900, was composed by her grandfather Colonel Armstrong on the authority of his mother-in-law (d. 1835) who was a daughter of the Rev. Swinden, possibly Susanna whose daughter Mary Anne Gurnell married John Armstrong. The connection appears to be supported by the publication in 1930 of a portrait in J. W. Scobell Armstrong's collection, stated to represent Mrs Swinden, painted in 1744 by Highmore. [8] A repetition of the Highmore is in the Sigmund Samuel collection, Toronto, and an eighteenth-century adaptation was owned by the late Brigadier Williams of Scorrier House, Penzance. [9]

A portrait to the right, in watercolours, by George, 1st Marquess Townshend (1724-1807), politician, and one of Wolfe's brigadiers, was presumably drawn before Quebec in the summer of 1759. Inscribed as a gift from the artist to Isaac Barré, Wolfe's adjutant-general, it is believed thereafter to have been in the Amherst collection and bequeathed, 1919, with Townshend's caricatures [10] of the sitter, to the McCord Museum, McGill University, Montreal. Considering Townshend's reputedly bad relations with Wolfe, it is an unusually straightforward and apparently friendly account. Profiles attributed to other officers, apart from Smyth and Townshend, include drawings by Montresor, engraved B. Killingbeck, 1783 (F. O'Donoghue and Sir Henry M. Hake, Catalogue of Engraved British Portraits ... in the British Museum, 1908-25, 19) and W. De Laune, New Brunswick Museum, Canada. Wilton's monument in Westminster Abbey completed in 1772 is the best known of sculpted portraits. It is close to his earlier and also posthumous bust taken from Lord Gower's servant (see NPG 4415). Of the many paintings devoted to the 'Death of Wolfe', the most famous is by West, signed and dated 1770, presented, 1918, from the Grosvenor collection to the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. A replica was painted for George III (Sir Oliver Millar, The Later Georgian Pictures in the collection of Her Majesty The Queen, 1969, 1167).

1) J. F. Kerslake, 'The Likeness of Wolfe', Wolfe, Portraiture & Genealogy, Quebec House, 1959, pp 17-43.
2) Date given on the label but from the sitter's appearance possibly earlier, c.1740.
3) Alternatively bought, 1764, from Wolfe's estate, see J. F. Kerslake, 'The Likeness of Wolfe', Wolfe, Portraiture & Genealogy, Quebec House, 1959, pp 22-24.
4) J. F. Kerslake, 'The Likeness of Wolfe', Wolfe, Portraiture & Genealogy, Quebec House, 1959, p 22, pl.2.
5) The above reproduced J. F. Kerslake, 'The Likeness of Wolfe', Wolfe, Portraiture & Genealogy, Quebec House, 1959, pls 3, 4, 5.
6) NPG archives.
7) J. Foster, Alumni Oxonienses, 1715-1886, 1888, p 1378.
8) J. F. Kerslake, 'The Likeness of Wolfe', Wolfe, Portraiture & Genealogy, Quebec House, 1959, pp 26ff; reproduced Connoisseur, LXXXVI, 1930, opposite p 216.
9) Reproduced J. F. Kerslake, 'The Likeness of Wolfe', Wolfe, Portraiture & Genealogy, Quebec House, 1959, pls.8, 9.
10) The majority reproduced in W. T. Waugh, James Wolfe: Man and Soldier, 1928.


This extended catalogue entry is from the out-of-print National Portrait Gallery collection catalogue: John Kerslake, Early Georgian Portraits, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1977, 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.