Edwin Irwin

© National Portrait Gallery, London

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Edwin Irwin

after Henry Edward Dawe
mezzotint, 1841 or 1842
Purchased with help from the Friends of the National Libraries and the Pilgrim Trust, 1966
Reference Collection
NPG D3137

Sitterback to top

  • Edwin Irwin (active 1840s), Eton poet. Sitter in 1 portrait.

Artistback to top

  • Henry Edward Dawe (1790-1848), Painter and printmaker. Artist or producer associated with 61 portraits.

Portrait setback to top

Subjects & Themesback to top

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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John Billingham

05 June 2017, 17:43

It is highly likely that Edwin Irwin was a former pupil of the Orphan Working School, situated, at the time he would have been at the school, in the City Road in London. It is thought that Prince Albert, the Prince Consort, commissioned a portrait of Irwin and also paid for an engraving to be made. It has been suggested that the Prince Consort presented a copy of the engraving to the Orphan Working School and that the original portrait was retained in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle.