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William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne

8 of 159 portraits of William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne

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William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne

by Samuel Diez
pencil and wash, 1841
14 7/8 in. x 12 in. (378 mm x 305 mm)
Purchased, 1941
Primary Collection
NPG 3103

Sitterback to top

Artistback to top

  • Samuel Diez (1803-1873), Artist. Artist or producer associated with 3 portraits.

Related worksback to top

  • NPG D38362: William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne (source portrait)

Linked publicationsback to top

  • Foister, Susan, Cardinal Newman 1801-90, 1990 (accompanying the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from 2 March - 20 May 1990), p. 22 Read entry

    Lord Melbourne was Prime Minister in 1834 and 1835-41, and on the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837 he acted as guide and mentor to the young Queen. Church matters played a large part in his ministries while attempts to reform the Church of England continued under the aegis of the Ecclesiastical Commission established in 1835 under Sir Robert Peel. Melbourne was widely suspected of being a freethinker and devoid of religious faith, and it was he who was responsible for the appointment of R. D. Hampden as Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford and the resultant agitation against him led by Newman, who professed a hatred of Whigs.

  • Ormond, Richard, Early Victorian Portraits, 1973, p. 313
  • Saywell, David; Simon, Jacob, Complete Illustrated Catalogue, 2004, p. 424

Events of 1841back to top

Current affairs

Sir Robert Peel's second term as Prime Minister. Peel replaces the Whig Prime Minister Lord Melbourne after a Conservative general election victory. The English comic periodical Punch is first published, under the auspices of engraver Ebenezer Landells and writer Henry Mayhew, and quickly establishes itself as a radical commentary on the arts, politics and current affairs, notable for its heavily satirised cartoons.

Art and science

Thomas Carlyle publishes his set of lectures On Heroes and Hero Worship, in which he attempts to connect past heroic figures to significant figures form the present.
William Henry Fox Talbot invents the calotype process, in which photographs were developed from negatives. This allowed for multiple copies of images to be made, and was the basis of modern, pre-digital, photographic processing.

International

Signing of the Straits Convention, an international agreement between Britain, France, Prussia, Austria, Russia and Turkey, denying access to non-Ottoman warships through the seas connecting the Mediterranean and the Black Seas, a major concession by Russia. Whilst signalling a spirit of co-operation, the convention emphasises the decline of the Ottoman Empire.

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