Molesworth Phillips

This portraitback to top

The drawing is taken from the only other recorded portrait of Phillips, an etching by Andrew Geddes, seated at a table with books and a picture of the death of Cook in background. The drawing is accompanied in the Brockedon album with a letter from Phillips describing the appearance of Captain Cook - 'most certainly six feet … raw boned with a very small head and capable of enduring the greatest fatigue …’.
Phillips also appears as a central figure firing a musket in Webber's picture 'The Death of Captain Cook' engraved by Bartolozzi and published by Webber himself, 1 January 1784.

Physical descriptionback to top

Head and shoulders to right inscribed in pencil: March 1825.

Provenanceback to top

See 'Drawings of Prominent People 1823-49' by W. Brockedon in Richard Ormond, National Portrait Gallery: Early Victorian Portraits, 1973, pp 554-6.


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.

View all known portraits for William Brockedon