Edward Gibbon
- Overview
- Extended Catalogue Entry
© National Portrait Gallery, London
Edward Gibbon
by Unknown artist
black chalk with white heightening, the hand and ears in sanguine, with pink crayon on the cheeks, on laid grey paper, circa 1785-1790
7 1/4 in. x 5 3/4 in. (184 mm x 146 mm)
Bequeathed by Robert Wyndham Ketton-Cremer, 1971
Primary Collection
NPG 4854
Sitterback to top
- Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), Historian; author of 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'. Sitter in 14 portraits.
Linked publicationsback to top
- Ingamells, John, National Portrait Gallery: Mid-Georgian Portraits 1760-1790, 2004, p. 204
- Saywell, David; Simon, Jacob, Complete Illustrated Catalogue, 2004, p. 244
Events of 1785back to top
Current affairs
George Prince of Wales secretly marries his mistress Maria Fitzherbert in contravention of the Royal Marriages Act of 1772.Prime Minister William Pitt introduces a bill proposing parliamentary reform and the abolition of 'rotten boroughs' but is defeated.
Art and science
William Cowper publishes his best -known poem The Task.James Boswell publishes The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, narrating his travels with the late writer Samuel Johnson.
Physician and naturalist James Hutton presents his studies of local rocks to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, launching the era of scientific geology.
International
Warren Hastings resigns as Governor-General of Bengal and returns to England. His trial begins on charges of corruption in the administration of India.French sculptor Jean Antoine Houdon crosses the Atlantic to sculpt a statue of George Washington.
British government establishes a permanent land force in the Eastern Caribbean, based in Barbados.
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