Sir Isaac Newton

Inscriptionback to top

Incised on supporting column: E.H. Baily. R.A./AFTER ROUBILIAC/1828.

This portraitback to top

A free copy from the Roubiliac bust of 1751 in the Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge. Mrs Esdaile was particularly critical of ‘the incredible inferiority of the drapery in the handling and modelling of the marble and the representation of texture’, pointing out that Baily had omitted Roubiliac’s ‘inner drapery’.
A second bust of Newton by Baily dated 1849 is at Woolsthorpe Manor.

Referenceback to top

Esdaile 1924
K. A. Esdaile, Roubiliac’s Works at Trinity College, Cambridge, 1924, p 5.

Piper 1963
D. Piper, Catalogue of the Seventeenth Century Portraits in the National Portrait Gallery 1625-1714, 1963, p 250.

Provenanceback to top

[probably commissioned by] Robert Vernon (1774/5-1849),¹ by whom presented to the National Gallery 1847; lent to the NPG 1895; transferred to the Tate Gallery 1953; transferred to the NPG 1957.

¹ Together with busts of Johnson (NPG 996), Wellington and Canning (both Tate Gallery), see Robert Vernon’s Gift, Tate Gallery, 1993, p 35 under no.5.

Exhibitionsback to top

Robert Vernon’s Gift, Tate Gallery, 1993, no.4; Beningbrough 1979–.


This extended catalogue entry is from the National Portrait Gallery collection catalogue: John Ingamells, National Portrait Gallery: Later Stuart Portraits 1685–1714, National Portrait Gallery, 2009, 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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