George Engleheart

1 portrait of George Engleheart

© National Portrait Gallery, London

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George Engleheart

by George Engleheart
watercolour, circa 1803
5 in. x 4 in. (127 mm x 102 mm) oval
Bequeathed by the sitter's great-grandnephew, Henry L.D. Engleheart, 1935
Primary Collection
NPG 2753

Sitterback to top

  • George Engleheart (1752-1829), Miniature painter. Sitter in 1 portrait, Artist or producer associated with 6 portraits.

Artistback to top

  • George Engleheart (1752-1829), Miniature painter. Artist or producer associated with 6 portraits, Sitter in 1 portrait.

Linked publicationsback to top

  • Saywell, David; Simon, Jacob, Complete Illustrated Catalogue, 2004, p. 207
  • Walker, Richard, Miniatures: 300 Years of the English Miniature, 1998, p. 89 Read entry

    George Engleheart ranks with Cosway, Smart and Ozias Humphry, and was one of the most prolific miniaturists ever known. His fee-books, still in the family possession, record, over a period of nearly forty years, no less than 4,853 miniatues (2,000 in the 1780s alone). They began in 1775, and this enormous span of activity can be divided into three periods: an early phase of about five years when his miniatures were small and of unsure technique; a middle phase in which he became confident, highly accomplished and often painted his female sitters sporting huge beribboned straw hats; and a final period, after about 1795, in which the ivories used were larger, more sombre in colour and treatment, and the familiar oval shape was frequently abandoned in favour of a rectangle. For many years he lived at Kew, was appointed miniature painter to George III in 1789, and painted at least twenty-five portraits of the King and many others of the royal family.

  • Walker, Richard, Regency Portraits, 1985, p. 174

Events of 1803back to top

Current affairs

The Vice Society is formally established by John Reeves and his associates to campaign against blasphemy and immorality, particularly that perpetrated by Thomas Paine and the Edinburgh Review.

Art and science

Erasmus Darwin's Temple of Nature published posthumously. A scientific treaty in the form of an elaborate couplet poem, its content anticipated some of the evolutionary ideas developed by his grandson, Charles Darwin, fifty years later.
Construction of the Caledonian Canal begins.

International

War with France resumes, sparking new fears of a cross-channel invasion.
United Irishman, Robert Emmett's attempted uprising in Dublin. Planned to coincide with Napoleon's expected invasion, it aimed to overthrow the English administration but ended in failure. Emmett is hanged along with several other conspirators.

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