Alfred, Lord Tennyson

© National Portrait Gallery, London

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Alfred, Lord Tennyson

by Frank Short, after George Frederic Watts
mezzotint, 1903 (1859)
16 in. x 11 1/2 in. (406 mm x 293 mm) plate size; 19 1/8 in. x 14 3/8 in. (485 mm x 366 mm) paper size
Acquired, 1974
Reference Collection
NPG D34497

Sitterback to top

Artistsback to top

  • Sir Francis Job ('Frank') Short (1857-1945), Etcher, engraver and teacher of printmaking. Artist or producer associated with 2 portraits, Sitter in 9 portraits.
  • George Frederic Watts (1817-1904), Painter and sculptor; Trustee of the National Portrait Gallery. Artist or producer associated with 93 portraits, Sitter in 43 portraits.

This portraitback to top

The artist George Frederic Watts was a passionate admirer of Tennyson and his works. He produced seven portraits of the poet from a painting in 1857 to the colossal bronze memorial statue erected in Lincoln in 1905. This engraving is after Watts's second, and widely considered his best, portrait of the poet. Watts sought more than a surface likeness of his friend; commenting that he tried to capture 'the shape and colour of a mind and life'. This picture soon acquired the title 'The Moonlight Portrait' on account of its sombre and introspective feel.

Linked displays and exhibitionsback to top

Subject/Themeback to top

Events of 1903back to top

Current affairs

Emmeline Pankhurst forms the militant organisation, the Women's Social and Political Union, campaigning for greater rights for women and to secure them the vote. Its members were known as 'suffragettes', and adopted the slogan of 'Deeds, not words'.
Joseph Chamberlain resigns as Colonial Secretary to campaign for tariff reform and an end to free trade, a key economic issue which splits the Conservative party.

Art and science

Henry James publishes The Ambassadors. Autobiographical in tone, it movingly and humorously traces the conversion of the American Lewis Lambert Strether, sent to Paris to find his widowed fiancee Mrs Newsome's wayward son Chad, to European culture.
Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the leading Scottish arts and crafts designer and architect, designs the Willow tea rooms in Glasgow for his patron, Miss Catherine Cranston.

International

The Bolsheviks (meaning 'the majority'), a faction of the exiled Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, are formed after splitting from the Mensheviks at the Second Party Congress in London.
After gaining independence following the end of the Spanish-American war, Cuba is forced to accept a permanent US military presence at Guantánamo Bay.

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