Joseph Severn

Inscriptionback to top

Inscribed on the mount in pencil: Pencil portrait of Joseph Severn the friend of Keats./belonging to Arthur Severn of Brantwood, Coniston./1912.
Inscribed on the back of the drawing in pencil: Joseph Severn - Rome/aged 25 -

This portraitback to top

The donor stated that this drawing had belonged to Arthur Severn (memorandum of an interview, 15 October 1940, NPG archives), but did not indicate whether it was acquired by himself or his father; Henry Buxton Forman wrote and edited several works on Keats and Shelley. A drawing almost identical to NPG 3091 is in Keats House, London, and a photographic reproduction of this is in the Keats-Shelley Memorial Museum, Rome; the latter is described as an original drawing, but investigation by the present compiler proved that it was a photograph. The Keats House and NPG drawings must have been executed soon after Severn's arrival in Rome with the moribund Keats in 1820; he was twenty-seven at the time, and not twenty-five as stated in the inscription.

Provenanceback to top

By descent to Arthur Severn; presumably Henry Buxton Forman, presented by his son, Maurice Buxton Forman, 1940.


This extended catalogue entry is from the out-of-print National Portrait Gallery collection catalogue: Richard Ormond, Early Victorian Portraits, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1973, 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.

Reproductionsback to top

John Keats and his Family: a Series of Portraits, printed for M. Buxton Forman (Edinburgh, 1933); and Poetical and Other Writings of John Keats, edited H. Buxton Forman, revised by M. Buxton Forman (Hampstead Edition, 1938-9), VIII, facing 134.


This extended catalogue entry is from the out-of-print National Portrait Gallery collection catalogue: Richard Ormond, Early Victorian Portraits, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1973, 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 Joseph Severn