Edmund Kean

Edmund Kean, by Thomas Charles Wageman, 1827 -NPG 4623 - © National Portrait Gallery, London

© National Portrait Gallery, London

Regency Portraits Catalogue

Edmund Kean

by Thomas Charles Wageman
1827
8 1/4 in. x 5 3/4 in. (210 mm x 146 mm)
NPG 4623

Inscriptionback to top

Inscribed indistinctly in pencil along top: Pry of Fredk Ingersoll Esqr Feby 25. 1829 and along bottom: Mr Kean Jany 1827.

This portraitback to top

The attribution to Wageman is of uncertain origin but reasonable enough; a drawing of Kean as 'Hamlet' by Wageman is at Harvard and prints are known after Wageman drawings of Kean as 'Coriolanus', 'Brutus' and 'Sir Giles Overreach'.

Physical descriptionback to top

Three-quarter-length seated, a slightly larger head only to right, and in a frame left a whole-length of himself as 'Richard III'.

Provenanceback to top

? Frederick Ingersoll; Henry S. Reitlinger and possibly his sale Sotheby's 26 May 1954 (487-502); Mrs Mavis Strange and bought from her 1968.

Exhibitionsback to top

'Gothick 1720-1840', Brighton, 1975 (D17).


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 Edmund Kean