Charlotte Brontë, when she first saw this portrait, exclaimed, “And there came up a lion out of Judah.” Later she wrote: “My father stood for a quarter of an hour this morning examining the great man’s picture. The conclusion of his survey was that he thought it a puzzling head; if he had known nothing previously of the original’s character, he could not have read it in his features. I wonder at this. To me the broad brow seems to express intellect. Certain lines about the nose and cheek betray the satirist and cynic; the mouth indicates a child-like simplicity, perhaps even a degree of irresoluteness, inconsistency—weakness, in short, but a weakness not unamiable.”
A replica of the painting by the same artist in the National Portrait Gallery was presented by Thackeray to Sir Frederick Pollock, and remained for many years in the possession of the Dowager Lady Pollock.
W. M. Thackeray, from a copy of the bust by Joseph Durham, A.R.A.
see page 14
W. M. Thackeray, from the statuette by Sir Edgar Boehm, R.A.
see page 34
W. M. Thackeray, from a sketch by Sir John E. Millais, P.R.A.
see page 23
In the National Portrait Gallery is also a bust modelled in terra-cotta by Sir Edgar Boehm from the original plaster mould by Joseph Durham, A.R.A., which was presented to the Garrick Club. And the same sculptor executed in 1860 a statuette for which Thackeray when in Paris gave only two short sittings of half an hour’s duration. “The eminent sculptor,” writes Mr. F. G. Kitton in the Magazine of Art, “even in that space of time succeeded in all but completing one of the most successful portraits of his subject ever attempted.” “The work of Sir John Millais possesses exceptional interest,” continues the same writer, “and especially may this be said of a full-length delineation by that master-hand of his famous literary contemporary. Although but a slight memory-sketch, it is very characteristic of the man, and the portraiture so very life-like and true that Sir Edgar Boehm derived from it considerable assistance when completing his excellent statuette of the novelist.”
Thackeray, from a painting by Sir John Gilbert, R.A.