Henry Wyndham Phillips

Inscriptionback to top

On mount below print, photographic facsimile of sitter’s autograph.

This portraitback to top

This image was created by David Wilkie Wynfield for his series of artists portrayed in historical and contemporary costume, many of which were released for sale from March 1864 under the title The Studio: A Collection of Photographic Portraits of Living Artists, taken in the style of the Old Masters, by an Amateur. Phillips appears in Part 4, entitled ‘After the Venetian School’, alongside F.R. Pickersgill, Frederick Walker and William Holman Hunt. His photograph, however, was not among those registered for copyright by Wynfield in December 1863 and was probably produced some time in 1864.

Wearing a velvet cap, lace collar and cuffs and a chain of linked discs, Phillips is portrayed in a manner evoking male portraiture by Titian, although no exact model has been identified. The costume appears the same as that in Wynfield’s portrait of Valentine Prinsep (NPG P83 and NPG P95), suggesting it came from an artist’s costume box, and perhaps indicating that the two portraits date from the same occasion. The same chain is seen in Wynfield’s portraits of G.D. Leslie and F.P. Cockerell; [1] it loosely resembles that in Daniel Mytens’ portrait of James I (NPG 109) and presumably came from a property box, too. The sharp profile seen in Phillips’s portrait was a common pose within The Studio series, as with Faed, Millais, Walker and Leslie.

Phillips and Wynfield both served as captains in the Artists’ Volunteer Corps. Early meetings to discuss the corps were held at Phillips’s studio, and he became the first to gain rank. [2]

Additional prints are in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (29-1945); and Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (1978P423). One was offered for sale Sotheby’s, 10 May 2001 (102).

See NPG collection P70–P100

Magdalene Keaney

Footnotesback to top

1) RA, London, 03/6971 (Leslie; see also Hacking 2000, pl.6) and 03/6947 (Cockerell).
2) Gregory 2006, pp.1, 13.

Physical descriptionback to top

Half-length, profile to right, wearing historical costume.

Provenanceback to top

Sir Edmund Gosse, from whose heirs purchased 1929.

Exhibitionsback to top

Victorian Worthies, Alexander Gallery, London, 1976 (5).

Reproductionsback to top

Gregory 2006, pl.2.

View all known portraits for Henry Wyndham Phillips

View all known portraits for David Wilkie Wynfield