Felicia Dorothea Hemans

Inscriptionback to top

Incised on back of left shoulder: ANGUS FLETCHER SCULP.

This portraitback to top

According to Harriet Hughes, Mrs Hemans's sister, the bust was commissioned by Sir Robert Liston whom Mrs Hemans visited at Milburn Tower in the late summer of 1829 (Works, I, p 201). This is confirmed by Mrs Rose Lawrence in The Last Autumn at a Favourite Residence, 1837, p 347, referring to the marble variant NPG 5198.
Mrs Hemans herself, writing to a friend from Milburn Tower says 'that sitting for a bust, awful as it may sound, is by no means an infliction so terrible as sitting for a picture; the sculptor allows much greater liberty of action, as every part of the head and form is necessary to his work. My effigy is now nearly completed, and is thought to be a performance of much talent: it is so very graceful that I cannot but accuse the artist of flattery, the only fault he has given me any reason to find. I am glad to think you will probably see it, as Mr Fletcher talks of exhibiting it in Liverpool' (Chorley, Memorials of Mrs Hemans, 1837, II, p 59).
The picture to which she refers was an oil painted by the American artist, W. E. West, and belonging to her sister Harriet. One of her children, comparing Fletcher's bust with West's oil, said 'the bust is poetess but the picture is all mother' (Works, 1839, II, p 130). Angus Fletcher was a friend of Geraldine Jewsbury, one of Mrs Hemans's oldest friends whom he eventually married. He was also a friend of Charles Dickens who described his imitation of Mrs Hemans in a veil reading her own poetry (letter to Forster 20 September 1840, Letters, 1969, II, p 129).
Except for variations in the hair-style and the dresses, the two busts are closely related, the marble probably being completed about a year later. Before parting with the plaster bust to the NPG, Miss Reid lent it to the Edinburgh sculptor D. W. Stevenson who wished to make a copy for the Scottish NPG and believed it to be the original and not a Cast: 'I am absolutely convinced from my knowledge as an expert that this is an original model' (letter 5 May 1896 in NPG archive).

Physical descriptionback to top

Hair plaited in a chignon, curls falling on right shoulder.

Provenanceback to top

Mrs Hemans's son, George Willoughby Hemans; Dr Michael Hemans; Mrs Butterworth and her son E. Butterworth, who sold it at Christie's 21 May 1978 (128) bought NPG.

Exhibitionsback to top

Fletcher exhibited busts of Mrs Hemans at Liverpool Academy in 1830 and 1832, probably the plaster in the first, the marble in the second; Dublin 1872 (268).

Reproductionsback to top

Stipple by Thomson for New Monthly Magazine, 1 July 1835 with facsimile of autograph; Collas-type from a medallion by E. W. Wyon is apparently based on this bust with slight variations in the dress and hair-style, frontispiece to Collas & Chorley, Authors of England, 1838.


This extended catalogue entry is from the out-of-print National Portrait Gallery collection catalogue: Richard Walker, Regency Portraits, National Portrait Gallery, 1985, 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.

View all known portraits for Felicia Dorothea Hemans