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Princess Mary, Duchess of Gloucester

© National Portrait Gallery, London

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Princess Mary, Duchess of Gloucester

by Joseph Epenetus Coombs, after Sir Thomas Lawrence
mezzotint and stipple engraving, published 1 October 1841
10 3/8 in. x 8 in. (264 mm x 203 mm) plate size; 11 3/4 in. x 9 1/8 in. (298 mm x 232 mm) paper size
Reference Collection
NPG D8018

Sitterback to top

Artistsback to top

  • Joseph Epenetus Coombs (active 1830s-1850s), Mezzotint engraver. Artist associated with 7 portraits.
  • Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830), Portrait painter, collector and President of the Royal Academy. Artist associated with 689 portraits, Sitter in 25 portraits.

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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