Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington

Inscriptionback to top

Inscribed: Duke of Wellington.

This portraitback to top

A pen and ink copy with scale was at Phillips (drawings sale) 22 March 1982 (82).
Sir Francis Chantrey’s Ledgers of Accounts (p 122) record an order from the Earl of Liverpool in 1820 for a bust of the Duke of Wellington and its execution and delivery at Fife House, 12 January 1824 for £157.10.0. The camera lucida drawings are at Stratfield Saye and the plaster models are in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. The prime marble, that commissioned by Lord Liverpool, is at Apsley House signed and dated: Chantrey Sc 1823, probably that exhibited RA 1824 (1011). Copies were ordered as follows:
(1) ? 1826-7, no year or commissioner given but the entry is annotated: 'This bust when executed had some spots on the neck and bosom which/induced Chantrey to lay it aside: it was afterwards sold in 1835/to A : Maclellan of Glasgow for one hundred guineas'; this is probably the marble bust in the Glasgow Art Gallery incised 1836.
(2) 1828 from Lord Egremont, executed and delivered 31 December 1828 (Sir Francis Chantrey’s Ledgers of Accounts, p 206), the bust is at Petworth dated 1828.
(3) 1828 from His Majesty for Windsor Castle, executed and delivered to Windsor March 1829 (Sir Francis Chantrey’s Ledgers of Accounts, p 211).
(4) 1832 from His Majesty through Lord Farnborough for Windsor, executed and placed in the Windsor Gallery 20 May 1826 for £210 (Sir Francis Chantrey’s Ledgers of Accounts, p 251); the bust is at Windsor dated 1835.
(5) 1836 from His Majesty for a temple at Kew, executed 2 August 1837 for £157.10.0 (Sir Francis Chantrey’s Ledgers of Accounts, p 278); probably the bust at Buckingham Palace dated 1837.
(6) 1836 from Lord Brownlow, executed in 1840 for £157.10.0 (Sir Francis Chantrey’s Ledgers of Accounts, p 278); the bust is at Belton House dated 1838.
The NPG drawings, which show the sitter with all the merciless accuracy of the camera lucida, have been developed by the sculptor into the magnificent Greek god of the marble busts; idealised drawings are at Stratfield Saye. Many marble copies exist and plaster and bronze versions were published by L. Brucciani 20 March 1836; an electrotype copy, reputed to have been cast from a Waterloo cannon, is in the hall of the old War Office, Whitehall. A colossal version dated 1841 is in the Examination Schools, Oxford.
Versions of a different type, in toga with head turned to his right, prominent jaw and side-whiskers, are in Dublin, at Felbrigg Hall, Hull Guildhall, and Sotheby's (New York) 23 April 1983 (691).
The equestrian statue outside the Royal Exchange was commissioned by the City of London in 1837. Chantrey attended a meeting of the Wellington Committee, presided over by the Lord Mayor, on 31 May 1837 and was introduced as the sculptor responsible for the statue (Sir Francis Chantrey’s Ledgers of Accounts, pp 282, 307). Drawings other than those in the NPG are in the Guildhall Library. Chantrey completed the model but died in 1841; the statue was finished by his assistant Henry Weekes and unveiled in 1844 on the anniversary of Waterloo, Wellington himself not being present (The Times, 19 June 1844, p 5b and Illustrated London News, 22 June 1844, p 404).

Chantrey's technique and working practices have been clearly described and analysed by Professor Potts in the introduction to Sir Francis Chantrey 1781-1841 Sculptor of the Great, NPG exhibition catalogue, 1981. The sittings began with drawings, profile and full-face, made with a device which traced the outlines of the head on to a sheet of paper. It was called by Chantrey himself a 'camera lucida' and was adapted from a special instrument patented by his friend William Hyde Wollaston who described it in detail:

Having a short time since amused myself with attempts to sketch various interesting views, without an adequate knowledge of the art of drawing, my mind was naturally employed in facilitating the means of transferring to paper the apparent relative positions of the objects before me; and I am in hopes that the instrument, which I contrived for this purpose, may be acceptable even to those who have attained to greater proficiency in the art, on account of the many advantages it possesses over the Camera Obscura.
(W. H. Wollaston in Nicholson's Journal, XVII, June 1807, pp 1-5 and plate 1)
Although Chantrey's device was known as a camera lucida, judging from Wollaston's illustration and Sir Henry Russell's description quoted below it was a variation from the accepted form and certainly does not tally with examples of the instrument in the Science Museum. However for the sake of convenience Chantrey's name for it has been used throughout this Catalogue.
The drawings finished, clay models were made by studio assistants and completed by Chantrey himself, usually at several informal sessions beginning with breakfast and accompanied by friends to ensure that conversation would keep the sitter animated. The clay was then transferred to plaster casts (many of which were presented to the Ashmolean Museum by Lady Chantrey in 1842) and finally to the marble bust.
The actual process, in 1822, was described vividly by one of the sitters, Sir Henry Russell (see NPG 316a(102-3)):

On the day we were to begin he appointed me to breakfast with him ... The first day, he only made a rough sketch of the face, using an instrument with a tube, through which he looked, while, with a pencil fixed on one arm of it, he traced an outline of the full size on paper ... In the construction of this instrument, Sir Francis told me he had himself made considerable improvements.
(George Jones, Sir Francis Chantrey RA: Recollections of his Life, Practice and Opinions, 1859, pp 275, 292.)
The process was also described by John Dalton in 1834 (see NPG 316a(27-30)) and by James Dunlop in 1836, recounted by C. R. Leslie:

Mr Dunlop had been sitting to Chantrey, who fixed the back of his head in a wooden machine to keep him perfectly still, and then drew with a camera lucida the profile and front face of the size of life. He afterwards gave a little light and shade to the drawings, and said, "I shall not require you to sit still after this."
(C. R. Leslie, Autobiographical Recollections, 1860, p 152.)
Among the conversationalists Chantrey employed to keep his sitters animated was George Jones, librarian and keeper of the RA and one of Chantrey's intimate friends and his executor. Jones's widow gave the collection of camera lucida drawings to the NPG, offering them in a letter of July 1870:

I was desired by my late husband George Jones RA to offer for the acceptance of the Trustees of the National Portrait Gallery - various drawings, taken with the assistance of the Camera Lucida, by the late Francis Chantrey RA - of celebrated persons & some members of the Royal Family. May I ask you to have the kindness to make this offer known in the proper quarter ... Gertrude Jones.
(MS letter in NPG archive).
The offer was accepted by the Trustees in February 1871. The collection consists of 202 drawings, on Whatman paper usually about 47 x 62 cm (18 ½ x 24 ½ in), some with simple outlines marked with guide crosses and lines, others worked up into finished portrait studies. Most are annotated with the sitters' names but about 40 have not been identified.

Referenceback to top

Holland 1851
J. Holland, Memorials of Sir Francis Chantrey, 1851, reviewed in The Athenaeum, 1851, p 1039.

Jones 1859
George Jones, Sir Francis Chantrey RA: Recollections of his Life, Practice and Opinions, 1859, copy annotated and presented by the author in the NPG library.

Potts 1981
Alex Potts, Sir Francis Chantrey 1781-1841 Sculptor of the Great, catalogue of NPG exhibition 1981.

Sir Francis Chantrey’s Ledgers of Accounts 1809-23, British Library (MS. Eg. 1911).

Sir Francis Chantrey’s Ledgers of Accounts 1809-41, Royal Academy Library, to be published in a forthcoming Walpole Society volume.

Physical descriptionback to top

Profile to left. Verso another profile to left, less finished.

Provenanceback to top

Sir Francis Chantrey; his executor George Jones RA and given by his widow, Gertrude Jones, 1871.


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.

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