Samuel Hood, 1st Viscount Hood

1 portrait matching these criteria:

- subject matching 'Transport and vehicles'

Samuel Hood, 1st Viscount Hood, by Lemuel Francis Abbott, 1795, based on a work of 1794 -NPG 628 - © National Portrait Gallery, London

© National Portrait Gallery, London

Regency Portraits Catalogue

Samuel Hood, 1st Viscount Hood

replica by Lemuel Francis Abbott
1795, based on a work of 1794
50 in. x 40 in. (1270 mm x 1016 mm)
NPG 628

This portraitback to top

The whole-length version from which Valentine Green made his mezzotint was commissioned by the Corsican Parliament House and painted by Abbott on Hood's return from the Mediterranean in October 1794. Hood had occupied Corsica at the invitation of Paoli but by the time the portrait had emerged from Abbott's notoriously dilatory studio Corsica was in French hands and it passed into the family collection where it has remained until lent to the National Maritime Museum by the sixth Viscount Hood in 1937; it was transferred to Loders Court (the Hon Alexander Hood) in 1963. The NPG three-quarter-length copy, provenance uncertain, was probably commissioned by John McArthur, founder and editor of the Naval Chronicle and an ardent collector of naval portraits; vol.II of the Naval Chronicle contains McArthur's Memoir of Hood and the lettering on Picart's stipple engraving of 1809 strengthens this hypothesis.

Physical descriptionback to top

Three-quarter-length standing to left aged about 70, admiral's undress uniform (1787-95), right hand on sword, left holding hat; short white wig, blue eyes, rosy weather-beaten complexion; he leans on a rock in Corsica, in left background his flagship the Victory and Admiral Hotham's Britannia, and the campanile of a church.

Provenanceback to top

Sold by private transaction through Christie's April 1881.

Exhibitionsback to top

'The Past We Share', Pollock Galleries, Owen Fine Art Centre, Southern Methodist University, Texas, 1967 (18).

Reproductionsback to top

Whole-length mezzotint by V. Green published 1 December 1795 and lettered: 'Engraved from the Original Picture, Painted for the Chamber of Parliament of Corsica, at the unanimous request of the House' (John Chaloner Smith, British Mezzotint Portraits, II, p 563); head and shoulders stipple by Picart from a drawing by Evans 'From an original Picture by F ABBOT [sic] in the Possession of JOHN McARTHUR Esq.' published 1809 in Cadell's Contemporary Portraits, I.


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.

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