ford madox brown - eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham
ford madox brown - eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham
ford madox brown - eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham
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Cat. no. 120 Portrait: Ford Madox Brown, c.1865<br />
After Elliott & Fry (albumen carte de visite)<br />
Modern photographic print, 138 x 111 mm (i.), 145 x 118 mm (p.)<br />
Lit.: Ford Madox Brown: The Un<strong>of</strong>ficial Pre-Raphaelite, p. 68<br />
Found unaccessioned, 2007 (2007.2600)<br />
Cat. no. 121 Portrait: Thomas Carlyle, c.1859<br />
Albumen print possibly by Charles<br />
Thurston Thompson; (top) 312 x 185 mm (bottom)<br />
312 x 168 mm<br />
Lit.: Hueffer, pp. 163-64; Jeremy Maas, The Victorian Art World in Photographs<br />
(1984),<br />
pp. 186-87<br />
Exh.: Thomas Carlyle 1795-1881, National Portrait<br />
Gallery, London, 1981 (13); Ford<br />
Madox<br />
Brown: The Un<strong>of</strong>ficial Pre-Raphaelite (38)<br />
Found unaccessioned, 1975 (1975P329)<br />
Although Ford Madox Brown met Thomas<br />
Carlyle (1795–1881), the essayist was too<br />
busy to sit for Work in person and instead posed for this photograph most likely taken in<br />
168<br />
1859 at 'Mr Thompson’s Photographic<br />
Establishment'. Mr. Thompson is almost<br />
certainly the photographer Charles Thurston Thompson (1816-1868).<br />
eral <strong>of</strong> them influenced his choice <strong>of</strong><br />
ngs were known for their lively rhetoric which comes<br />
g to pose for the photograph:<br />
169 Brown was<br />
deeply impressed with the works <strong>of</strong> Carlyle and sev<br />
subject matter. Carlyle’s writi<br />
across in the letter he wrote to Brown agreein<br />
I think it a pity you had not put (or should not still put) some other man than<br />
me in your Great Picture. It is certain you could hardly have found among the<br />
sons <strong>of</strong> Adam, at present, any individual who is less in a condition to help<br />
you forward with it … I very well remember your amiable request, and the<br />
promise I made to you, to 'sit for some photographs.' That promise I will<br />
keep; and to that we must restrict ourselves, hand <strong>of</strong> Necessity compelling.<br />
Any afternoon I will attend here, at your studio, or where you appoint me, and<br />
give your man one hour to get what photographs he will or can <strong>of</strong> me. If here,<br />
the hour must be 3½ pm (my usual hour <strong>of</strong> quitting work, or to speak justly,<br />
the chamber <strong>of</strong> work); if at any other place, attainable by horseback, it will be<br />
altogether equally convenient to me; and the hour may be such as enables me<br />
to arrive (at a rate <strong>of</strong> 5 miles per hour we will say!). 170<br />
The National Portrait Gallery holds another photograph <strong>of</strong> Carlyle sitting in a chair,<br />
which was owned by the sculptor Thomas Woolner (1825-1892), a friend <strong>of</strong> the artist<br />
(F ig. 182). It appears to have been taken in the same studio session as the same clothes,<br />
props and backdrop can be seen in the photograph. It is a smaller portrait <strong>of</strong> Carlyle from<br />
the waist up, and is likely to have been taken as the sitter seems to have moved his head<br />
168<br />
Undated letter from Thomas Carlyle to Ford Madox Brown cited op. cit. at note 3, p. 163. Hueffer<br />
implies that the photography session took place in 1859.<br />
169<br />
See entry for Thomas Carlyle (albumen photograph, c. 1859, National Portrait Gallery, NPG x1344)<br />
accessed online on 28.11.2008 at http://www.npg.org.uk/live/search/portrait.asp?search=ss&sText=thomas<br />
+carlyle&LinkID=mp00760&rNo=15&role=sit<br />
170<br />
Op. cit. at note<br />
3, pp. 163-64.<br />
270