George Richmond, R.A.

A leading light among The Ancients in the 1820s, and a close friend of both Samuel Palmer and John Linnell, having spent a number of years in France and Italy, Richmond established himself as one of the leading portrait painters in England in the 1850s and 60s. He painted many of the great figures of the age, including Gladstone and Ruskin, both of whom were close friends; William Wilberforce, Lord Palmerston and Charlotte Brontë; and his skill was much admired by contemporaries. Following his death in 1896, his obituary in the Times wrote that 'in beauty of draughtsmanship and in subtle indication of expression few have surpassed him.' Ormond lists 12 self-portraits by Richmond,¹ in addition to that in the Nation Portrait Gallery, London (NPG 2509). However, with no reference to dimensions and a lack of identifying labels or inscriptions on the reverse of the stretcher (excluding a very faint and now illegible Christie's stencil) it is impossible to know whether any of them refer to the present work. A similar self-portrait, formerly in the possession of the artist's descendants, was sold in these rooms, 4 July 2001, lot 129, and is now in the Berger Collection, Denver Art Museum (2018.27). 

¹ R. Ormond, Early Victorian Portraits, 2 vols., London 1973, vol. 1, p. 395.