Warren Hastings

Inscriptionback to top

Inscribed verso: Rdus Cosway/R:A./Primarius Pictor/Serenissimi Wallia/Principis/Pinxit/1787

This portraitback to top

Hastings was impeached in May 1787, the year NPG 6286 was drawn, and his trial was to begin in February 1788. Maria Cosway then told Thomas Jefferson that ‘Mr H [Hastings] was with Mr Cosway at the very moment the trial was going on’. [1]
A version in a plain oval frame, ‘given by the sitter to William Byam Martin, Commissioner at Calcutta, in the 1780s’, [2] was with Miss H. D. Layton, Oxford, in 1954.

Footnotesback to top

1) Quoted by G. Barnett, Richard and Maria Cosway, 1995, p 102.
2) Note in NPG archive.

Referenceback to top

Knapp 1951
Sir Arthur Knapp, A Catalogue of the known Portraits of Warren Hastings, [1951] type-script NPG [a revision of his catalogue in A. M. Davies, Warren Hasings, 1935, p 14, no.1.

Walker 1998
R. J. B. Walker, Miniatures in the National Portrait Gallery, 1998, no.67.

Physical descriptionback to top

Blue eyes, white hair, wearing a blue coat with brass buttons, cream waistcoat and white stock.

Provenanceback to top

Mrs Warren Hastings; W. H. Woodman Hastings, who sold it; bought on the London art market in 1926 by the Hon Frederic H. A. Wallop (d. 1953), by whom lent to the Victoria and Albert Museum 1927-49; his nephew Alan Evans, by whom bequeathed to the National Gallery 1974; lent to the NPG until permanently transferred in 1994.

Exhibitionsback to top

Richard & Maria Cosway, Edinburgh, NPG, 1995 (65).


This extended catalogue entry is from the out-of-print National Portrait Gallery collection catalogue: John Ingamells, National Portrait Gallery: Mid-Georgian Portraits 1760-1790, National Portrait Gallery, 2004, and is as published then. For the most up-to-date details on individual Collection works, we recommend reading the information provided in the Search the Collection results on this website in parallel with this text.

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