Richard Porson

1 portrait matching these criteria:

- subject matching 'Plaster'

Richard Porson, by Giovanni Domenico Giannelli, 1808 -NPG 673 - © National Portrait Gallery, London

© National Portrait Gallery, London

Regency Portraits Catalogue

Richard Porson

by Giovanni Domenico Giannelli
1808
27 in. (686 mm) high
NPG 673

Inscriptionback to top

Incised: Publishd as the Act Directs/November 15 1808 (last line indistinct).

This portraitback to top

Porson's nephew Siday Hawes, an undergraduate at Cambridge at the time of his death, said that the Chantrey bust at Trinity bore no resemblance to Porson 'but a cast of his head and face taken after death by Ganganelli [sic] is most accurate' (letters in NPG archive). This is confirmed by Pryse Gordon: '... from this [Hoppner's oil] and a post-obit masque in plaister, a good bust of him was executed, I think by Turnerelli … Porson's head was remarkably fine' (Pryse Gordon, Personal Memoirs, 1830, I, pp 287-8).
Copies of the bust at Trinity and Eton College are incised: J D Giannelli fecit/Publishd as the Act Directs/Novembr 15 1808.

Provenanceback to top

Elizabeth Hawes, Porson's sister, and bequeathed by her daughter Mrs Chuter 1883.

Exhibitionsback to top

RA 1809 (801).

Reproductionsback to top

Bust in profile, stipple and etching in The European Magazine, December 1808, p 411; stipple and line by James Fittler, 'RICARDUS PORSON/Engraved from a bust taken immediately after his Death' published by Mawman 15 August 1812.


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 Richard Porson