Amelia Opie

Inscriptionback to top

Incised: AMELIA OPIE/DAVID 1829.

This portraitback to top

Amelia Opie loved Paris and had spent much time there with her husband even catching a glimpse of Napoleon in 1802. She returned in 1829 meeting Cuvier, Lafayette and Humboldt, and David says, 'j'ai fait souvent des visites au Père-Lachaise avec Madame Opie. J'ai passé des journées entières avec cette femme intéressante, modeste et tendre' (Georges Chesneau, Les Oeuvres de David d'Angers, 1934, p 258, no.726). David worked up his 1829 medallion into a plaster bust now in Musée de la Ville d'Angers (Georges Chesneau, Les Oeuvres de David d'Angers, 1934, no.266). The entente was mutual. 'My next hero' says Amelia, 'is no General but a sculpteur liberal, the first man of his class here who before I saw him was desirous of making a medal of me for having made him cry his eyes out by my works. Malgré moi, he has made me en medaille, me and my petit bonnet which the artists here say looks like a Phrygian helmet, and has un air classique; but though young and flattered, the thing is like and David satisfied ...' (letter to Joseph Gurney cit. Jacobine Menzies-Wilson & Helen Lloyd, Amelia, 1937, p 236).
According to Weber the medal was cast in Richard's Paris foundry. Cust also gave the NPG a medallion of Sir John Bowring (NPG 1082) and bought for himself casts of Brunel, Byron, Canning, Flaxman, Franklin, Ross, Admiral Sir Sidney Smith (when living in Paris), Leader and Lord Rivers (letter from Weber in NPG archive).

Physical descriptionback to top

Head and shoulders profile to left in Quaker bonnet.

Provenanceback to top

David's son-in-law L. Richard (Paris founder), acquired from him by F. Parkes Weber who sold it to Sir Lionel Cust and given by him in 1897 (see Bowring in Richard Ormond, National Portrait Gallery: Early Victorian Portraits, 1973, 47).

Reproductionsback to top

Collas process by P. Lightfoot reproduced in Brightwell as frontispiece with facsimile autograph: In loving fellowship farewell! A Opie 3rd Mo. 24th 1841.


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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