Thomas Moore

Inscriptionback to top

Incised: Bust of Tho^s Moore. Esqr^e/C. Moore. Sc./LONDON. 1842.

This portraitback to top

Christopher Moore originally asked Moore to sit for his bust on 6 March 1824 and Moore's Diary mentions sittings in June 1824, March 1833 to September 1835. Busts are recorded at the RA 1834 (1049), Crystal Palace dated 1838, and a duplicate of NPG 117, similarly signed and dated, is in National Gallery of Ireland. The head was used again for the memorial statue in College Street, Dublin, engraved for Illustrated London News, 31, 1857, p 388, and by Roffe for The Art Journal, 1858, p 156.
Moore also sat to Christopher Moore for a medallion 25 June 1827. Thomas Moore's almost unbelievably conceited Diary, 2 September 1835 achieves its climax with this bust: 'A last sitting to - [probably Mulvaney]; he has had, indeed but two before, and in all three I had a sculptor [C. Moore] working at me on the other side, chisel and pencil both labouring away. Having nothing in my round potato face but what they cannot catch, i.e. mobility of character, - the consequence is that a portrait of me can be only one or other of two very disagreeable things, - a caput mortuum or a caricature.'

Provenanceback to top

Bought from the sculptor in 1861 (letters in NPG archive).

Exhibitionsback to top

(This or the Dublin version)
RA 1841 (1321); Manchester 1857 (146) lent by the sculptor.


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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