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Regency Portraits Catalogue

Sir Humphry Davy, Bt (1778-1829), Natural philosopher

Pioneer of electro-chemistry and inventor of the safety lamp (1815); President of the Royal Society 1820-7.

'He is now about thirty-three [actually 37] but with all the freshness and bloom of five-and-twenty, and one of the handsomest men I have seen in England …' (George Ticknor 8 June 1815, Life and Letters, 1876).

Referencesback to top

Davy 1836
John Davy, Memoirs of the Life of Sir Humphry Davy, 2 vols., 1836.

Davy 1839
Sir Humphry Davy, The Collected Works, 9 vols., 1839.

Hartley 1966
Sir Harold Hartley, Humphry Davy, 1966.

Paris 1831
J. A. Paris, Life of Sir Humphry Davy, 2 vols., 1831.

Thorpe 1896
T. E. Thorpe, Humphry Davy, Poet and Philosopher, 1896.

Treener 1966
Anne Treneer, The Mercurial Chemist, 1963.


This extended catalogue entry is from the out-of-print National Portrait Gallery collection catalogue: Richard Walker, Regency Portraits, National Portrait Gallery, 1985, 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.