Mid-Georgian Portraits Catalogue
Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Statesman; orator; author
- Gallery portraits
- All known portraits
- Biography and References
Politician and writer; edited the Annual Register 1759-88; MP 1765-94; secretary to Lord Rockingham 1765-66; published Thoughts on the Present Discontents 1770, and Reflections on the Revolution in France 1792; led the impeachment of Warren Hastings from 1787.
‘his Irish accent ... was as strong as if he had never quitted the banks of the Shannon’ (Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, 1815).
‘He was five feet ten inches high, erect, well-formed, never very robust ... near sighted ... he almost constantly, from about the year 1780, wore spectacles ... His countenance was such as a painter would find it difficult precisely to draw (and indeed I always understood they complained of the difficulty); its expression frequently varying, but always full of benevolence’ (Sir James Prior, 1826).
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.
‘his Irish accent ... was as strong as if he had never quitted the banks of the Shannon’ (Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, 1815).
‘He was five feet ten inches high, erect, well-formed, never very robust ... near sighted ... he almost constantly, from about the year 1780, wore spectacles ... His countenance was such as a painter would find it difficult precisely to draw (and indeed I always understood they complained of the difficulty); its expression frequently varying, but always full of benevolence’ (Sir James Prior, 1826).
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.