Conyers Middleton

This portraitback to top

NPG 626 is evidently the portrait commissioned by Walpole and mentioned by Cole after the sitter's death: 'His health ... never was very robust, as I have been told; being when young very fat and subject to humours in his face; but both these inconveniences had left him before I knew him, he being always remarkably thin, and very like the print of him, taken from an original picture which my worthy friend Mr Horatio Walpole ... begged Dr Middleton to set for; which mezzotinto print was engraved soon after his death ...'. [1] Faber junior's engraving, 1751, is lettered Eccardt Pinx.^t 1746 ... From an Original in the Collection of the Hon.^ble Horace Walpole. An engraving by Vertue probably preceded Faber's but, with his sight failing by 1751, [2] it was 'ill done'. [3]

Footnotesback to top

1) Horace Walpole's Correspondence, edited W. S. Lewis, 1937, 15 (Dalrymple), Appendix 2, p 313.
2) H. Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, Anecdotes of Painting in England ... collected by ... George Vertue; digested ... by Horace Walpole, edited J. Dalloway and R. N. Wornum, 1862, III, p 998.
3) Horace Walpole's Correspondence, edited W. S. Lewis, 1937, 15 (Dalrymple), p 303.

Physical descriptionback to top

Grey-blue eyes, grey eyebrows, long thin face and nose, fresh complexion, white wig, centre-parted, to shoulders; black gown with white bands; light yellowish-brown background, shading to darker brown.

Conservationback to top

Rubbed; retouchings on upper forehead, side of wig, lower left, and gown; also to background, upper left.

Provenanceback to top

Bought, 1881 from J. Noseda of the Strand; from the collection of Horace Walpole, [1] Strawberry Hill sale, 18 May 1842, lot 6, bought Strong.

1) Sir George Scharf, Historical and Descriptive Catalogue of the Pictures, Busts & etc. in the National Portrait Gallery, new and enlarged edition, 1888, p 310.

Reproductionsback to top

Engraved by J. Faber junior (F. O'Donoghue and Sir Henry M. Hake, Catalogue of Engraved British Portraits ... in the British Museum, 1908-25, 1) and G. Vertue (F. O'Donoghue and Sir Henry M. Hake, Catalogue of Engraved British Portraits ... in the British Museum, 1908-25, 2).


This extended catalogue entry is from the out-of-print National Portrait Gallery collection catalogue: John Kerslake, Early Georgian Portraits, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1977, 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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