Matthew Prior

This portraitback to top

The figure sits tightly within the composition and perhaps NPG 562 was cut down from a three-quarter-length (127 x 101). An adaptation of the Welbeck portrait (see NPG 91), using the same face mask, but differing principally in showing a red silk gown over his dark coat, a more ornate chair, the quill differently held, and his left hand lying on the chair arm. The attribution to Hudson, Richardson’s pupil in the 1720s, dates from at least 1775 and seems quite plausible.
An enamel by H. P. Bone 1851, inscribed … after Richardson in the British Museum (i.e. NPG 562), was sold Bonham’s, 24 June 2004, lot 12.

Referenceback to top

Ellis 1843
Sir Henry Ellis, List of Portraits suspended on the Walls of the Eastern Zoological Gallery, British Museum, no.66 as ‘by Hudson, from an original of Richardson …’.

Piper 1963
D. Piper, Catalogue of the Seventeenth Century Portraits in the National Portrait Gallery 1625-1714, 1963, p 288.

Welbeck 1936
R. W. Goulding, Catalogue of Pictures belonging to … the Duke of Portland …, C. K. Adams ed., p 178.

Provenanceback to top

Presented to the British Museum by the 2nd Earl of Bessborough 1775; transferred to the NPG 1879.

Exhibitionsback to top

Tercentenary Exhibition, Royal Society, Burlington House, 1960; Beningbrough 1978–.


This extended catalogue entry is from the National Portrait Gallery collection catalogue: John Ingamells, National Portrait Gallery: Later Stuart Portraits 1685–1714, National Portrait Gallery, 2009, 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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