Frederick Richard Pickersgill

Inscriptionback to top

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

This portraitback to top

This is one of the images created during the 1860s for David Wilkie Wynfield’s 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. Pickersgill appeared in Part 4, ‘After The Venetian School’, with Henry Wyndham Phillips, William Holman Hunt and Frederick Walker. The image is not among those registered for copyright in December 1863.

Pickersgill is shown wearing a soft velvet Tudor-style cap and part of a replica suit of armour. The ‘Venetian’ aspect of the composition appears to derive from Titian-esque allusions: the cap worn in the 1548 portrait of Charles V (Alte Pinakothek, Munich) and the armour of Charles V and Alfonso d’Avalos. The same costume is seen in Wynfield’s portraits of George Du Maurier, an unidentified sitter, and probably Coutts Lindsay. [1]

This print was acquired from the estate of Edmund Gosse. Other prints are in the Royal Academy of Arts, London (03/4521); Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (1978P422); and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (135-1945).

See NPG collections P70–P100.

Dr Jan Marsh

Footnotesback to top

1) See Hacking 2000, pls 40, 44 and 24.

Physical descriptionback to top

Half-length to front, wearing historical costume.

Provenanceback to top

Sir Edmund Gosse, from whose heirs purchased 1929.

Exhibitionsback to top

Victorian Worthies, Alexander Gallery, London, 1976 (23).

‘And When Did You Last See Your Father?’, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, 1992 (35).

View all known portraits for Frederick Richard Pickersgill

View all known portraits for David Wilkie Wynfield