Sir Frederick William Trench

Inscriptionback to top

Inscribed on a label on the back: General Sir Frederick Trench/late of Heywood/A prominent promoter of/The Thames Embankment/& other improvements in London; also on the back is a letter from P. M. Trench of Dublin, 29 March 1886, suggesting lines of inquiry towards identifying the subject.

This portraitback to top

The panorama of the Thames Quay cascading from Trench's desk appears to stop at St Paul's and is therefore intended to represent his A Collection of Papers relating to the Thames Quay, with Hints for some further Improvements, illustrated with lithographs by C. M. Baynes and published in 1825, re-issued in 1827. This followed an unsuccessful Bill in Parliament introduced to obtain Treasury support for the project, but in spite of influential backing the plans were dropped and the Embankment was not begun until five years after Trench's death, with his elegant colonnades omitted. The furnishing of his room includes on a bracket the marble bust by Matthew Wyatt (1826) of Trench's patron, the Duchess of Rutland, now at Castle Howard. Manuscripts and a William Kent table point to his various antiquarian interests.
The portrait was sold by Sotheby's with the attribution to William Yellowlees, a name originally suggested by the NPG without much conviction. It is unsigned but belongs to the category of small interiors popular in the 1820s and 1830s of which Wilkie's 'Duke of York' and Jones & Cohen's 'Robert Vernon' are NPG examples. Other practitioners of the genre were C. R. Leslie, Sir William Newton, and Pieter Wonder.

Physical descriptionback to top

Whole-length standing in a room at a writing desk inscribing a panoramic view of London; brown curly hair and whiskers, blue eyes, fresh complexion; long purple dressing-gown, high white shirt collar, white stockings, black slippers.

Provenanceback to top

Possibly Colonel Hylton Jolliffe MP and his descendant Lord Hylton; Mrs M. Morton (d. 1980), her niece Mrs F. Lloyd and her sale Sotheby's 10 June 1982 (95) bought Leggatt for the NPG.


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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