Sir William Blake Richmond
1 of 16 portraits of Sir William Blake Richmond
- Overview
- Extended catalogue entry
© National Portrait Gallery, London
Later Victorian Portraits Catalogue Search
Sir William Blake Richmond
by Unknown artist
Oil on canvas, 1869?
20 1/2 in. x 14 7/8 in. (520 mm x 378 mm)
NPG 2779a
Inscriptionback to top
Initialled and dated in red paint, lower left-hand corner: ‘TH [?] / 1869 [?]’.
Stamp on back of canvas: ‘PREPARED BY / WINSOR & NEWTON / 38 RATHBONE PLACE / LONDON’.
This portraitback to top
This portrait (prudently referred to as ‘the canvas’ in National Portrait Gallery correspondence) was offered by its owner, Miss Caroline Ediss, in 1935:
I found this portrait of G.F. Watts or maybe Sir William Richmond. Its rather spoilt for public exhibition by the picture of the gentleman in a coronet on the Eastle [sic]. I was tempted to paint that out – for it is I think a skit on Tennyson by his friends. Should the gallery care to acquire it – a modest sum – would meet the occasion […] I could touch out the chips and mend the 2 tears if required.[1]
Miss Ediss accepted Henry Hake’s offer of a pound (payable by postal order) on 4 September 1935.
The portrait was not put to the Trustees, and not cited in the 79th Annual Report (1935–6). It was first listed (unillustrated) in the Complete Illustrated Catalogue (1981). Crudely painted and damaged, it remains in the same unexhibitable condition as when acquired. The head does appear to be a portrait of Richmond.
Carol Blackett-Ord
Footnotesback to top
1) Letter from Caroline (Carrie) Ediss to Henry Hake, 17 Aug. 1935, NPG RP 2779a. The offer to the NPG was no.175/1935.
Physical descriptionback to top
Whole-length figure in a smock, seated to left, facing cartoon on easel, palette and maulstick in left hand, green screen in background.
View all known portraits for Sir William Blake Richmond
Related pages
- Searching for Shakespeare
- Brilliant Women
- Popular Prints of Victoria and Albert
- Nelson: before and after Trafalgar
- Making History: Printed Portraiture in Tudor and Stuart Britain
- Gunpowder, Treason and Plot
- Chartist Portraits
- Silhouettes display, 2004-05
- William Hazlitt's Spirit of the Age
- Return to Life: A New Look at the Portrait Bust
- Restoration Lives: Samuel Pepys and His Circle
- Theodore de Mayerne
- Mary, Queen of Scots: Fact and Fiction
- Escape to Eden
- Mary, Queen of Scots
- Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Art Conservation Project
- His picture in little: Shakespeare, Hamlet and Tacita Dean
- Votes for women
- Rebel women
- 'This sceptred isle': Shakespeare and the Plantagenets
- 2019 Anniversaries
- Peterloo 1819: democracy, protest and justice
- Everyday icons: collecting popular portraits
- Tudor and Elizabethan matching pairs
- Love Stories
- Icons and Identities: Shakespeare to Winehouse
- Love stories: art, passion and tragedy