Thomas Gray

© National Portrait Gallery, London

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Thomas Gray

by John Giles Eccardt
oil on canvas, 1747-1748
15 7/8 in. x 12 7/8 in. (403 mm x 327 mm)
Purchased, 1895
Primary Collection
NPG 989

On display at Strawberry Hill Trust, Twickenham

Sitterback to top

  • Thomas Gray (1716-1771), Classical scholar and poet. Sitter in 14 portraits.

Artistback to top

  • John Giles Eccardt (active 1740-died 1779), Portrait painter. Artist or producer associated with 21 portraits.

This portraitback to top

This portrait was commissioned by Gray's life-long friend, Horace Walpole. In his hand is his poem Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College; Eton being the place where the two men had first met in their youth. More detailed information on this portrait is available in a National Portrait Gallery collection catalogue, John Kerslake's Early Georgian Portraits (1977, out of print).

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Events of 1747back to top

Current affairs

Jacobite Simon Fraser, 11th Baron Lovat is found guilty of high treason and beheaded by axe at the Tower of London; the last man to be executed in this way in Britain.
Abolition of Hereditable Jurisdictions Act breaks the power of the Scottish clans.
Liverpool overtakes Bristol as Britain's busiest slave trading port.

Art and science

Actor David Garrick becomes co-manager of Drury Lane Theatre, London.
Physician James Lind undertakes one of the first controlled medical experiments on the effect of citrus fruit as a cure for scurvy.
Hannah Glasse publishes The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy; eighteenth-century England's most popular cookbook.

International

War of the Austrian Succession: at the First Battle of Cape Finisterre the British fleet is victorious against the French. British forces led by William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland are subsequently defeated by Marshal Maurice de Saxe's French army at the Battle of Lauffeld near Maastricht. At the Second Battle of Cape Finisterre the British fleet puts an end to French naval operations for the remainder of the war.

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