6 OF 8 
Dion Boucicault (Dionysius Lardner Boursiquot) ('London Assurance')
6 of 8 portraits of Dion Boucicault
© National Portrait Gallery, London
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Dion Boucicault (Dionysius Lardner Boursiquot) ('London Assurance')
published by Frederick Arnold, after Unknown artist
lithograph, published in the Hornet 11 September 1872
14 7/8 in. x 11 in. (379 mm x 279 mm) paper size
Purchased, 2017
Reference Collection
NPG D48305
Sitterback to top
- Dion Boucicault (Dionysius Lardner Boursiquot) (1820-1890), Actor and playwright; father of Darley George Boucicault (Dion Boucicault Jr). Sitter in 8 portraits.
Artistsback to top
- Frederick Arnold (active 1870s), Magazine publisher. Artist or producer associated with 111 portraits.
- Unknown artist, Artist. Artist or producer associated with 6578 portraits.
Events of 1872back to top
Current affairs
The (Secret) Ballot Act is passed. By ending open voting in local and general elections, the act reduced the scope for intimidation at hustings, an important step towards democracy. Previously, voters had to mount a platform and announce their choice of candidate to a recording officer, so although most working men had already been enfranchised, employers were able to punish workers who did not vote for their preferred candidate.Art and science
George Eliot's novel Middlemarch is published. Exploring the impact of the 1832 Reform Act on provincial England, and charting the changes in class, politics, art and science in the nineteenth-century, Eliot's novel is widely perceived to be one of the best examples of the English realist novel.International
The Metaphysical Club is formed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by William James (brother of author Henry James), Oliver Wendel Holmes Jr, and Charles Sanders Peirce. The group begins to develop the American philosophy of pragmatism, which held that ideas were simply mental constructs that people formed to help them cope with the world, but which did not exist in an ideal realm.Comments back to top
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Robert Whelan
10 July 2019, 12:22
This cartoon was published shortly after the premiere of Dion Boucicault's spectacular musical extravaganza Babil and Bijou at Covent Garden on 29 August 1872. It was bankrolled by the Earl of Londesborough and was said to be the most expensive show ever seen in London. The sub-title of the cartoon is therefore sarcastic: far from restoring the national drama, Boucicault was accused of debasing it by feeding the public appetite for spectacle over literary texts. The scene references the famous water-cave scene from Boucicault's melodrama The Colleen Bawn (1860) in which Boucicault, as the loveable rogue Myles-na-Coppaleen, takes a header into the lake to save the drowning Eily O' Connor (the Colleen Bawn). This 'sensation scene' gave rise to the term 'sensation drama' to describe a play that owed its success to a spectacular stunt. London Assurance was the title of the comedy which Boucicault wrote for Madame Vestris and Charles Mathews to perform at Covent Garden in 1841 when he was only twenty.