William Paley

1 portrait by George Romney

William Paley, by George Romney, based on a work of 1789-1791 -NPG 145 - © National Portrait Gallery, London

© National Portrait Gallery, London

Mid-Georgian Portraits Catalogue

William Paley

after George Romney
based on a work of 1789-1791
28 3/4 in. x 24 in. (730 mm x 610 mm)
NPG 145

This portraitback to top

A pedestrian copy from NPG 3659. A previous attribution to Beechey, made by Scharf in 1862, was doubtless based on several half-length engravings from the Romney portrait being described as after ‘Beechy’, [1] but the attribution was immediately questioned. [2] In 1985 Goodison showed that the half-length version in Christ's College, Cambridge, was a documented copy from Lord Ellenborough's Romney made by Beechey in 1809. [3] Another weak half-length version was in a private collection in 1960.

Footnotesback to top

1) By F. Engleheart 1810, T. Ranson 1819 and 1822, and J. Gellatly; a second state of Engleheart's plate altered Beechey’s name to Romney. Other half-length plates by J. Hopwood 1805 and S. Freeman gave no painter’s name.
2) Letters from John Burton and Lord Ellenborough, Notes and Queries, 3/II, 1862, pp 388, 416.
3) J. W. Goodison, Cat. of the Portraits in Christ’s, Clare and Sidney Sussex Colleges, Cambridge, 1985, p 31 (64), and see W. Roberts, Sir William Beechey RA, 1907, p 229.

Physical descriptionback to top

Grey eyes, powdered wig, black hat with a red ribbon, dark blue coat.

Provenanceback to top

Bought in Bristol by Christopher Knight Watson,1 from whom purchased 1862.

1 1844-1901, secretary of the Society of Antiquaries 1860-82; he told Scharf (letter of 8 April 1862; NPG archive) that he had bought the portrait ‘somewhat rashly, on the representation of a friend who wrote to tell me that a ‘portrait of my Grandfather Bishop Watson [Richard Watson, 1737-1816] was on sale at Bristol’'.


This extended catalogue entry is from the out-of-print National Portrait Gallery collection catalogue: John Ingamells, National Portrait Gallery: Mid-Georgian Portraits 1760-1790, National Portrait Gallery, 2004, 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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