Richard ('Beau') Nash

This portraitback to top

Believed by the donor to be the prototype portrait by Hoare, NPG 1537 is in fact a coarse copy of the half length presented to the city of Bath in 1761. The portrait, a head and shoulders in the Pump Room between busts of Newton and Pope, [1] occasioned the following epigram attributed to Chesterfield:

This picture plac'd the busts between,
Gives satyr all his strength;
Wisdom and wit are little seen,
But folly at full length. [2]

Footnotesback to top

1) See 'The Bath Pump Room', by Lawrence Weaver, p 2, published Country Life, 20 November 1915.
2) Cited Dictionary of National Biography, XIV, p 100; ‘full length' seems to be poetic licence.

Physical descriptionback to top

Blue eyes, deep pouches below, thick dark grey eyebrows, small mouth, lips parted, double chin, ruddy complexion, brown wig; white shirt and cravat, brown coat, open, over embroidered salmon-pink waistcoat, light fawn tricorne hat; plain brown background; lit from the left.

Conservationback to top

Paint tending to lift; a number of small losses stopped, mainly in the costume and background.

Provenanceback to top

Presented, 1909, by Alfred Jones, a Bath dealer.

Reproductionsback to top

The type engraved by A. Walker as frontispiece to Oliver Goldsmith's Life of Richard Nash, 1762.


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.

View all known portraits for Richard ('Beau') Nash