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Samuel Wilberforce

6 of 84 portraits of Samuel Wilberforce

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Samuel Wilberforce

by Carlo Pellegrini
watercolour, published in Vanity Fair 24 July 1869
12 in. x 7 1/8 in. (305 mm x 181 mm)
Purchased, 1923
Primary Collection
NPG 1993

Sitterback to top

  • Samuel Wilberforce (1805-1873), Bishop of Oxford and of Winchester; son of William Wilberforce; Trustee of the National Portrait Gallery. Sitter in 84 portraits.

Artistback to top

  • Carlo Pellegrini (1839-1889), 'Ape'; caricaturist. Artist or producer associated with 490 portraits, Sitter in 5 portraits.

Related worksback to top

Linked publicationsback to top

  • Cooper, John, Great Britons: The Great Debate, 2002, p. 118 Read entry

    The son of William, the anti-slavery reformer, Samuel was Bishop of Oxford at the height of The Origin of Species controversy. At the 1860 meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, held in Oxford, he debated with Darwin's supporters Hooker and Huxley. Defending the establishment position that science was a branch of theology presided over by an all-creating God, 'Soapy Sam' angered Huxley, who railed against 'the round-mouthed, oily, special pleading of the man'.

  • Foister, Susan, Cardinal Newman 1801-90, 1990 (accompanying the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from 2 March - 20 May 1990), p. 60 Read entry

    Samuel Wilberforce was the third son of William, and brother of Henry, Robert and William. He was a graduate of Oriel College, like his brothers, and was ordained in 1829. An energetic and ambitious man, in October 1845 he was appointed Bishop of Oxford. The following month Newman was received into the Roman Catholic Church; Wilberforce's sister-in-law and her husband followed him in 1846, his brothers Henry in 1850, Robert in 1854, William in 1863, and his daughter and son-in-law in 1868.

    Wilberforce himself, nicknamed 'soapy Sam' in 1864, on account of his reputation for equivocation, was generally expected to follow his family into the Catholic Church. He steered a successful course as Bishop of Oxford, however, gaining Pusey's confidence, as well as being active in supoprting the missionary bodies, church building and educational provision. In 1869 he was made Bishop of Winchester, but was killed in a riding accident in 1873. Four days before his death he said in the House of Lords, 'I hate and abhor the attempt to Romanise the Church of England'. Newman commented on his death, 'There is something inexpressibly sad in the picture of a man going out on a beautiful Saturday, with a few friends, in a beautiful county, with everything calm, joyous and heavenly around him, and suddently being carried off to the awful darkness of the other world.' (Quoted by Ian Ker, John Henry Newman: A Biography, Oxford, 1988, p 675)

    The caricature by Pellegrini was published in Vanity Fair on 24 July 1869 as 'Statesman, No.25. "Not a brawler"'.

  • Saywell, David; Simon, Jacob, Complete Illustrated Catalogue, 2004, p. 661

Events of 1869back to top

Current affairs

Gladstone introduces the Irish Church Disestablishment Act, which disestablishes the Church of Ireland, disassociating it from the state and repealing the paying of tithes to the Anglican Church of Ireland.
Girton College is founded in Cambridge by Barbara Bodichon and Emily Davies, the first residential college for women in England; women were granted full membership to the University in 1948.

Art and science

Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev invents the periodic table of elements, which arranges elements within a group in order of their atomic mass.
The British scientist Mary Somerville publishes her last book On Molecular and Microscopic Science.
Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir paint together in the open air at La Grenouillère, developing the Impressionist style.

International

The Suez canal opens, linking the Red Sea and the Gulf of Suez with the Mediterranean Sea, and transforming trade routes between Europe and Asia as merchants no longer had to circumvent Africa. The canal was largely in British and French control until Egyptian nationalisation in 1956, which sparked off the international Suez crisis.
Serialisation of Leo Tolstoy's epic novel of Russian society during the Napoleonic wars, War and Peace finishes.

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