Later Victorian Portraits Catalogue

Self-portraits
Doubtful self-portrait
By other artists
Photographs

Self-portraitsback to top

?1851
Oil on board; see NPG 2759.
This is the prime painted image for Hughes.

Doubtful self-portraitback to top

c.1849
Oil on canvas, The Young Poet; Birmingham MAG, 1935P38. Exh. Rebels and Martyrs, NG, 2006 (16).
Preliminary sketch and oil study for above; Birmingham MAG, 1995P5 and 30'57. Ref. Roberts & Wildman 1997, no.4-4.3; and Roberts & Wildman 1998, no.3.
This figure is often described as a self-portrait but is best read as a generic poet image.[1]

By other artistsback to top

c.1836
Oil on board by Samuel Lane, Arthur Hughes at the Age of Four, three-quarter-length, standing to right, coll. Tate, N04870.

1849
Drawing by Carl Haag, inscr. on mount ‘Academy Students / 17 Novr 1849’, half-length to right, second from right in a group of seven figures; Eton College.

1852–3
Pencil drawing on paper by Sir John Everett Millais, head-and-shoulders to left, a study for the Cavalier in The Proscribed Royalist, 1651 (1853; coll. Lord Lloyd Webber); RA, London, 02/220. See Millais 1899, vol.1, pp.172–7 for Hughes’s sittings.

1858
Pencil drawing by John Brett; see NPG 6483.

1886
Pen and brown ink over pencil drawing by William Bell Scott, signed and dated 3 Oct. 1886, half-length to left, seated reading; priv. coll.; Sotheby’s 18 Apr. 1978 (40, ill.).[2]

1907
Drypoint by Francis Dodd, three-quarter-length, seated to left; colls BM, London 1908,0221.2and 1926,0813.1); and Birmingham MAG, 1908P16.

1912
Drawing by Arthur Foord Hughes, head-and-shoulders to left; coll. Maj. Greville Chester. Repr. Roberts & Wildman 1997, p.41.

Photographsback to top

c.1858–64
Albumen prints by W. & D. Downey, two known poses:
(a) see NPG P30.
(b) whole-length, standing to left, arms crossed on plinth; colls the Munro family (repr. Roberts & Wildman 1997, p.17); and The Rob Dickins Coll., Watts G., Compton, COMWG2008.121, COMWG2008.122, and COMWG2008.1029 (half-length detail)|http://wattsgallery.adlibsoft.com/default.aspx}.
These are probably the prime photographic images for Hughes.

1863
Albumen print with arched top by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), inscr. and dated on mount 12 Oct. 1863, whole-length, seated to right with his daughter Agnes; prints colls Gernsheim Coll., HRHRC, U. of Texas at Austin, 964:0001:0040; Tate Archive (slightly cropped). Repr. Nickel 2002, pl.14; also repr. as halftone by Art Repro Co. after Carroll, Collingwood 1898, p.420.

c.1905
Gelatine silver bromide print by unidentified photographer, whole-length, seated to left at easel; The Rob Dickins Coll., Watts G., Compton, COMWG2008.971. Repr. Maas 1984, p.103; Bills & Webb 2007, no.88; and Roberts & Wildman 1997, frontispiece.

c.1908
Photograph by unidentified photographer, whole-length, standing to left on doorstep; U. of Cape Town L. Repr. Roberts & Wildman 1997, p.39.


Footnotes
1) The poet’s hair is parted on the right, Hughes’s hair is normally parted on the left. The figure also resembles Hughes’s friend the sculptor Alexander Munro.
2) Hughes stayed with W.B. Scott at Penkill Castle, Ayrshire, from 11 Sept. to 8 Oct. 1886: ‘We had Arthur Hughes until Friday … [He was] busy all day long with painting or reading, until he had an amusing collection of studies and landscapes more or less finished, his latest being a portrait of me.’ Letter from W.B. Scott to Vernon Lushington, 10 Oct. 1886, cited Roberts & Wildman 1997, p.202.

Carol Blackett-Ord