James Laing
1 of 2 portraits by Edouard Pingret
© National Portrait Gallery, London
James Laing
by Charles Turner, after Edouard Pingret
mezzotint, published 1819
12 1/8 in. x 8 5/8 in. (308 mm x 219 mm) paper size
Purchased with help from the Friends of the National Libraries and the Pilgrim Trust, 1966
Reference Collection
NPG D3522
Artistsback to top
- Edouard Pingret (1788-1875), Painter and lithographer. Artist or producer associated with 2 portraits.
- Charles Turner (1773-1857), Engraver. Artist or producer associated with 634 portraits, Sitter in 2 portraits.
Events of 1819back to top
Current affairs
Peterloo Massacre leaves eleven dead and four hundred wounded as crowds, gathered to hear radical Henry Hunt call for reform of the House of Commons, are forcibly dispersed.Six Acts are passed, stiffening the 1795 Treason Act and introducing a tax on the periodical press which was viewed as seditious.
Art and science
Percy Bysshe Shelley writes Ode to the West Wind during a year of extraordinary creativity in which he also finishes Prometheus Unbound.Lord Byron publishes his tour-de-force Don Juan; one man's mock-epic odyssey through a world without fixed principles.
First ship with a steam engine crosses the Atlantic in twenty-eight days.
International
Thomas Jefferson establishes the University of Virginia.Royal Navy anti-slave squadron is set up to patrol the West African coastline.
French physician Rene Laennac invents the stethoscope.
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Charles Matthews
20 May 2016, 09:14
Edouard Pingret was in London in 1819, exhibiting four portraits at the Royal Academy (from an address 27 Oxenden Street, details in Algernon Graves, "The Royal Academy of Arts: a complete dictionary of contributors"). This is not from one of those, which were of three military men, and a "portrait of a lady". He did other portraits in 1819: the National Army Museum has one of Sir Neil Campbell (http://www.nam.ac.uk/online-collection/detail.php?acc=1963-05-2-1). The subject here is not in uniform. James Laing of Dominica and Streatham Hill (died 1831) is a candidate. Apparently he acted as Provost Marshal in Dominica; in 1814 he was in England recovering from an accident (https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=gvEWCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA116). James Laing of Streatham Hill was High Sheriff of Surrey in 1815. His age at death was 83 (ttps://books.google.co.uk/books?id=fLQUAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA477) so 71 in 1819, which seems to fit.