Elizabeth Gaskell Contemporary Portraits
“Indeed it would be pleasant to feel that [my likeness] was hanging on the walls of so kind a friend"
– from a letter to the artist, Samuel Laurence, 1864 –
Elizabeth Gaskell was a celebrity in her day, so it is, perhaps, surprising that only a few portraits of her exist. There are images showing her in her twenties in the 1830s, in her forties in 1851, and in her fifties in the 1860s.
This is an attempt, by Anthony Burton, to survey the known portraits (authentic and suppositious) of Elizabeth Gaskell. It will be updated from time to time (most recently 25/05/2023).
A. Contemporary Portraits
A1: David Dunbar (1793-1866) - Bust of Elizabeth Gaskell
Plaster
Height unkown
1829-31
Apparently destroyed
A photograph of the bust, reproduced by Emery Walker, was included in the Knutsford edition (1906) of Sylvia’s Lovers. This out-of-copyright image has been scanned by the Gaskell Society from a volume in Elizabeth Gaskell’s House, and may be freely reproduced.
Commentary
‘Mr Losh told my cousins in town that he thought my bust so very like Napoleon – Do you.’ This characteristically self-mocking comment comes in one of EG’s chatty letters to her friend Harriet Carr, which is dated by the writer ‘August the last. 1831. & Sep 1st’. (Further Letters, pp. 8, 6.) It seems overwhelmingly probable that it refers to the Dunbar bust. If the bust were made before summer 1831 (as this quotation suggests), its creation might well fall in the periods (winter 1829-30 and winter 1830-31) when EG was staying in Newcastle with the Rev William Turner. This seems likely because Dunbar was based in Newcastle 1830-41, see
http://www.solwaypast.co.uk/index.php/bricks/13-mem/121-dun
The mention of ‘Losh’ in EG’s letter supports a Newcastle connection. James Losh was a prominent Newcastle lawyer, a Unitarian, and a leading member of the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society (see his entries in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and Wikipedia), which commissioned a bust of him from Dunbar (still on show in the Society’s premises). William Turner was also a leading light in the Newcastle Lit-and-Phil, so it is possible to see a chain of connections which might have resulted in a bust of EG by Dunbar.
Later on, the bust was treasured in the Gaskells’ homes. In 1910 Mrs Ellis Chadwick (Mrs Gaskell: Haunts, Homes and Stories, London: Pitman, 1910, p.180) records that it ‘is enclosed in a glass case, and stands on a pedestal in the corner of the drawing-room at Plymouth Grove, Manchester, the most priceless ornament in the room. It is hoped that it will ultimately find its way to the National Portrait Gallery…’. In fact, it proceeded to Manchester City Art Gallery (see Janet Allan, ‘The Gaskells’ bequests’, Gaskell Society Newsletter, no.32, Autumn 2001, p.4). It seems that this bust is now untraceable at the Art Gallery. Since it was made of plaster (John Chapple, Elizabeth Gaskell: The Early Years, Manchester: University Press, 1997, p.386 n.15), it would have been easily damaged.
A1a: Hamo Thornycroft (1850-1925) - Copy of the Dunbar bust, 1890s
Marble
Height: 650mm on plinth 120mm
?1890s
John Rylands Library of the University of Manchester, ref VFA1 Catalogue entry
Commentary
This copy of the Dunbar bust was presented to the Manchester University Library by the Misses Gaskell before 1900, having presumably been commissioned by them for this purpose. See Philip Hartog, The Owens College, Manchester … A Brief History, Manchester: J. E. Cornish, 1900, pp.118, 149. It stood in the Christie Library (the then university library).
The bust was on loan to Elizabeth Gaskell’s House for some years from the House’s opening as a public attraction in 2014. It has now returned to the University Library: see
https://rylandscollections.com/2015/11/09/mrs-gaskell-returns/
A bust which is a copy of this copy was installed in an exterior niche on the Gaskell Tower in Knutsford, Cheshire. See the Wikipedia article Gaskell Memorial Tower and King’s Coffee House. The tower was opened in 1907, but the bust was not then in place; it had arrived by 1913.
A2: William John Thomson (1771-1845) - Miniature
Portrait miniature of Elizabeth Gaskell
Watercolour on ivory? In an oval case covered in red velvet, consisting of two leaves, one supporting the portrait behind glass in a metal frame, the other (hinged on to the first) serving as a cover.
Inscribed on the back of the miniature: ‘Painted by W. J. Thomson June 1832 Edin —
(image) 10.2 x 6.2 cm
1832
Gaskell Family Collection
While the original work of art belongs to the Gaskell Family Collection, a digital image is available in the John Rylands Library Digital Collections (Elizabeth Gaskell Collection):
https://luna.manchester.ac.uk/luna/servlet/Gaskell2~91~1 ItIts image reference number is: JRL020257tr
Commentary
The artist was well known: see
http://www.profilesofthepast.org.uk/mckechnie/thomson-william-john-mckechnie-section-5
The circumstances in which he came to paint EG remain obscure. Winifred Gerin (Elizabeth Gaskell, Oxford: University Press, 1990 [first published 1976], p.43) raised some problems. ‘Permission to paint an unmarried girl at the time would not readily be accorded to a stranger, and the Gaskells’ financial position even after she was married would hardly have allowed them to commission a portrait from a successful artist.’ She postulated a family connection: Thomson ‘was, in all probability, a connection of Elizabeth’s stepmother, née Thomson’. Jenny Uglow (Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories, London: Faber, 1999 [first published 1993], pp.64, 630 n.37) confirms that Thomson was the elder brother of EG’s stepmother, and asserts that consequently ‘there is no mystery’ as to how EG came into contact with the artist. There remains some element of doubt as to how she might have sat for the portrait in June 1832. John Chapple (Elizabeth Gaskell: The Early Years, Manchester: University Press, 1997, pp.371-2) enlarges on the family link with the Thomsons, and establishes that EG was in Edinburgh in 1831, and may then have encountered W. J. Thomson, but there seems to be no evidence that she met him in 1832. This year was, of course, the year of her engagement, and that may have provided an occasion for commissioning a portrait.
A3: Unknown artist - silhouette (1830s?)
Unknown artist
Silhouette portrait in profile
?Ink or paint? on card
Dimensions
?1830s
The Gaskell Family Collection
While the original work of art belongs to the Gaskell Family Collection, a digital image is available in the John Rylands Library Digital Collections (Elizabeth Gaskell Collection):
https://luna.manchester.ac.uk/luna/servlet/Gaskell2~91~1
Its image reference number is: JRL15040284
Commentary
This silhouette was published as a portrait of Elizabeth Gaskell by Clement K. Shorter in his literary page in The Sphere (which he edited) on 4 March 1922 (p.40 of 68). It then belonged to Bryan Holland, grandson of EG, son of Marianne. The silhouette remained in the Gaskell family. It was assumed to be Elizabeth Gaskell, and this supposition was confirmed by facial recognition analysis in 2015.
See the blog by John Hodgson, ‘Facial recognition software solves Elizabeth Gaskell mystery’, 16 November 2015:
The provenance of this item is compelling. EG’s features, as recorded in the Thomson miniature and the Dunbar bust, were strongly structured and easily recognisable, so there seems little doubt of the authenticity of this silhouette.
A4: George Richmond (1809-96) - Portrait of Elizabeth Gaskell
Coloured chalk on paper
24¼ x 18¾ ins
Signed and dated ‘George Richmond delt 1851’
National Portrait Gallery, London, NPG 1720
This portrait was much reproduced, in the form of engravings and photographs, and some of these reproductions may seem more distinct than the original, which has faded considerably over time. For instance, there is a good version as the frontispiece of the Knutsford edition (1906) of Mary Barton. The Gaskell Society has made a digital image of this, which may be freely reproduced.
Commentary
This is, as the NPG’s catalogue says, ‘the most famous and most widely reproduced image of Mrs Gaskell’ (Richard Ormond, Early Victorian Portraits: National Portrait Gallery, London: HMSO, 1993, p.184). Richmond’s diary and account book (photostats in the NPG) contain references, as do Gaskell’s letters, so the genesis and authenticity of the portrait are conclusively established. What is not so clear is why the portrait was made. In 1851 EG was in the first flush of fame, and Richmond was the pre-eminent portraitist of his day: perhaps that sufficiently explains why she chose to be memorialised in this way. For Richmond see his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; and note that there is a current project to trace all his portraits, which are in private hands as well as public collections: http://georgerichmondproject.com/about/
It is possible to speculate about the motivation behind the portrait. In 1850, Richmond was commissioned to make a portrait of Charlotte Brontë. The moving spirit here was Brontë’s publisher, George Smith, who recorded: ‘During Miss Brontë’s visit to us in June 1850, I persuaded her to sit to Mr. George Richmond for her portrait. This I sent afterwards with an engraving of the portrait of the Duke of Wellington to her father, who was much pleased with them’ ([Elizabeth Smith], George Smith: A Memoir with some pages of autobiography, London: for private circulation, 1902, pp.103-4). The portrait was hung in Haworth Parsonage in August 1850. It was in August 1850 that EG and Charlotte Brontë first became acquainted and talked to each other at length (Letters, no.75). It is tempting to think that Charlotte’s portrait might have been mentioned, thus inspiring EG to desire a portrait of herself. But there is no evidence for this, though EG did later mention that she saw the portrait of Charlotte Brontë at Haworth in 1853 (Letters, p.243).
This portrait is probably rather flattering. Richmond’s portraits have been criticised for their ‘notorious idealisation of their subjects’ (Angus Easson in Gaskell Society Newsletter, no.87, Spring 2004, p.14). A contemporary put it more politely: ‘He gives you the mind, the character, the inner self of his sitter, and always with a facile grace which, while it transfigures the subject, still faithfully reproduces him [sic].’ (Mrs Pitt Byrne, quoted in Annette B. Hopkins, Elizabeth Gaskell: Her Life and Work, New York: Octagon Books,1952, p.349.)
A5: Samuel Laurence (1812-84) - Portrait (1)
Graphite and black chalk touched by red and white chalk on paper
7 5/16 x 5 7/16 in
?1850s
Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, ref 1986.2234
Commentary.This portrait has an impressive provenance: given by the artist’s grandson to the prominent American scholar, Gordon N. Ray, and by him to one of the world’s greatest literary research libraries. It has not, however, achieved wide circulation, perhaps because it is quite similar to the Richmond portrait.
Image no: 348420v_0001.jpg
A6: Samuel Laurence (1812-84) - Portrait (2)
Portrait of Elizabeth Gaskell (in a cap)
?Watercolour on paper
Dimensions
?1864
Whereabouts unknown
Commentary. It seems likely that this portrait is referred to in a letter from EG to Samuel Laurence, dated ‘Septr 12th.’ [1864]: ‘I should not have the least objection to Mr Smith’s becoming the possessor of your likeness of me; indeed it would be pleasant to feel that I was hanging on the walls of so kind a friend – When next I am in London, I hope that I (and my cap) may be able to give you another sitting.’ (Letters, p.738) The reference to the cap is significant: this seems to be the only portrait of EG in a cap. The reference to George Smith (EG’s publisher) as the possessor of the portrait is also significant, for when the portrait later appears, it is in the possession of Elizabeth Maud Gordon (of Biddlesden Park, Brackley, Northants – Letters, p.738, n.3). Mrs Gordon was a grand-daughter of George Smith and inherited a collection of manuscript and other material from him; on her death in 1985 she made a bequest of Brontë material to the Brontë Society (Brontë Society Transactions, vol.19, 1986, pp.41-3), and in a sale of her collection at Christie’s in June 1986 the Brotherton Library of the University of Leeds bought the manuscript of EG’s Sylvia’s Lovers. The current whereabouts of this Laurence portrait are unknown, but it was reproduced in Annette B. Hopkins, Elizabeth Gaskell: Her Life and Work, New York: Octagon Books,1952, and in Winifred Gérin, Elizabeth Gaskell, Oxford: University Press, 1976, plate 15.
A7: Samuel Laurence (1812-84) - Portrait (3)
Portrait of Elizabeth Gaskell
Pastel on paper
Dimensions
?1864
Gaskell Family Collection
While the original work of art belongs to the Gaskell Family Collection, a digital image is available in the John Rylands Library Digital Collections (Elizabeth Gaskell Collection):
https://luna.manchester.ac.uk/luna/servlet/Gaskell2~91~1 Its image reference number is: JRL 1500573
The Gaskell Society has made a digital image of the Emery Walker reproduction in the Knutsford edition, which may be freely reproduced.
Commentary. ‘Early in life Laurence became closely associated with the Victorian literati, and he was to draw and paint most of the writers and thinkers of his day many times.’ (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography) If, as suggested in EG’s letter quoted in the previous entry, she did sit again for Laurence, the result may well have been this portrait, which has always been in the Gaskell Family Collection. It was reproduced photographically by Emery Walker in the Knutsford edition (1906) of Cousin Phillis (no source, but Meta Gaskell was obviously involved in assembling illustrations for this edition). Although the portrait seems to convey alert intelligence as a quality of EG, Meta criticised it because it ‘only told of one side of her character, the nobility and heroism, and left all the exquisite tenderness untouched’ (Irene Wiltshire (ed), Letters of Mrs Gaskell’s Daughters, Penrith: Humanities E-Books, 2012, p.102). See Joan Leach in Gaskell Society Newsletter, no.33, Spring 2002, pp.7-8.
A8: Valentine from George Smith, 1864
George Smith (1824-1901) or an artist commissioned by him
Comical valentine greeting to Elizabeth Gaskell
?Pen and ink on paper
10 x 10¼ ins
1864
Present location unknown
Commentary. The existence of this caricature of EG (as a milkmaid) has been known at least since it was mentioned in Elizabeth Haldane, Mrs Gaskell and her Friends, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1930, pp.272-3. It is reproduced in J. G. Sharps, Mrs Gaskell’s Observation and Invention, Linden Press, 1970, facing p. 544, and Jenny Uglow, Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories, London: Faber, 1999 [first published 1993], plate 18. Also in Gaskell Society Newsletter, no.19, February 1995, pp.8-9, where J. G. Sharps explains that he found that the original was in the possession of Dr Winifred Lamb. She lent it to him, and he had it photographed. A print of the photograph was included in his BLitt thesis, which is deposited in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. This presumably accounts for Uglow’s rather misleading credit acknowledgement to the Bodleian. The original was sold by Bloomsbury Auctions, London on 12 June 2013: its present whereabouts are untraced. https://www.liveauctioneers.com/en-gb/item/17960332_elizabeth-novelist-1810-65-autograph-letter-si
The words are:
More more, he cried,e’er Phillis breath’d her last,
Three Volumes more, I want them quick and fast
Trollope’s too long, Macdonald slow and tame
There’s only you can raise the Cornhill’s fame.
Muti has charms, no doubt, and Elsie too
But listen to your Smith and Elder – do
March is upon us; Copy’s wanted sore
Oh! be our Valentine, and send us more.
St Valentine’s Day. 1864
The final episode of Cousin Phillis appeared in the February 1864 issue of the Cornhill.
A9: Margaret Emily Gaskell (1837-1913), Portrait
Miniature portrait of Elizabeth Gaskell
Watercolour
Dimensions
1860s
Cheshire Archives, ref. c00566
Commentary. The existence of a portrait of EG by her daughter Margaret Emily (‘Meta’) is attested in a letter from Meta to the Gaskell family friend, the American Charles Eliot Norton (1827-1908): ‘I have tried too, day after day, to copy that portrait rightly, but hitherto failed. I mean to try and try again, and hope so much to succeed. I never copied it before, because it did not – indeed it did not – do Mama anything like justice; and I always meant to make a fresh drawing of her for you…. I will continue now to try to copy the portrait – but the photograph that you have is, I think, far the nearest to her of anything.’ The letter is dated only ‘29 March’ but Irene Wiltshire places it in 1866. Another letter of 19 April indicates that Meta did send a portrait (‘her face’) to Norton. (Irene Wiltshire (ed), Letters of Mrs Gaskell’s Daughters, Penrith: Humanities E-Books, 2012, p.102. And Gaskell Society Newsletter, no.8, August 1989, p.11.) In due course, in March 1929, Norton’s daughter, Elizabeth Gaskell Norton, gave a portrait to George Payne, author of Mrs Gaskell and Knutsford (1900), expressing the wish that it should be placed in Knutsford Public Library. Payne did this, reproducing the portrait with an acknowledgement to Knutsford Public Library, in his Mrs Gaskell, A Brief Biography (Manchester: Sherratt & Hughes, 1929). The portrait was still at Knutsford Public Library in 1984 (information from Katie Owen of Cheshire Archives). Knutsford Public Library was part of the library service of the county of Cheshire, so at some stage the portrait moved over into the county record office, Cheshire Archives (accompanied by Payne’s letter of gift, D 5437/3). Since 2014 it has been on loan to Elizabeth Gaskell’s House, where it is on display.
A10: Alexander McGlashon (1811-77), Photograph 1864
Photograph of Elizabeth Gaskell
Full-plate print
9.3 x 7 ins
1864
John Rylands Library of the University of Manchester, ref English MS 343/1a
A digital image is available in the John Rylands Library Digital Collections (Elizabeth Gaskell Collection): https://luna.manchester.ac.uk/luna/servlet/Gaskell2~91~1 Its image reference number is: JRL021406bw
An example of the same image at carte-de-visite size is held in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
A drawing closely following part of this photograph was published in Mrs Ellis Chadwick, Mrs Gaskell: Haunts, Homes and Stories, London: Pitman, 1910, facing p.350.
Commentary. Alexander McGlashon was a fairly prominent photographer in Edinburgh in and around the 1860s. See https://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/alexander-mcglashon
It is assumed that these photographs were taken when EG was visiting Edinburgh in February 1864, when she stayed with Professor George Allman. He was married to Louisa, the sister of William Shaen, who had married Emily Winkworth. The Shaens and Winkworths were intimate friends of the Gaskells, and Elizabeth refers to Louisa as ‘a dear friend of mine’ (see Letters, no.546).
It was common practice for Victorian photographers in the 1860s to take several photographs in various poses during a sitting. These might be printed in various sizes, e.g. full-plate (approx. 8½ x 6½ ins), carte-visite (approx. 3½ x2½ ins), or, later, cabinet prints (approx.5½ x 4 ins). Carte-de-visite photographs tended to be widely distributed among friends, so surviving carte-de-visite photographs of EG can be found in various collections.
Photographs, being multiples, tended to become more widely spread than portraits produced by traditional means, which would usually be unique, and would remain the property of their subjects or the subjects’ families. Other portraits surveyed here were unique, and EG seems to have been comfortable with them. However, she declared ‘I hate photographs’. This remark comes in a partially undated letter (probably 1865) to Ann Robson, in a passage in which EG expresses disapproval of biographies of living people (Letters, p.761). She adopts a similar attitude in an earlier letter (of 5 February 1857), giving her negative response to an invitation to participate in a venture entitled the National Gallery of Photographic Portraits. This was a proposal to issue specially commissioned photographs by Herbert Watkins with brief biographical notices by Herbert Fry. It appeared serially, with four or five photographs to each instalment. See https://researchworks.oclc.org/archivegrid/collection/data/859212084
The project did not extend beyond sixteen photographs:
Material relating to the project (including the letter from EG) was gathered in an album (Album 39), now in the National Portrait Gallery: https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait-list.php?set=511&displayStyle=thumb
EG refused to be included in the project: ‘I … still believe as I have always previously done [with] similar proposals of having my likeness published – and more especially with a Memoir. Other women may not object to having their portraits taken for the public and & sold indiscriminately, but I feel a strong insurmountable objection to it.’ (Letter, which appears to be hitherto unpublished, quoted in Elizabeth Rye, ‘An Investigation into a Portrait Thought to Be of Elizabeth Gaskell’, Gaskell Journal, no.32, 2018, pp.64.)
A10(2): Alexander McGlashon (1811-77), Photograph 1864
Carte de visite photograph.
Image 9.3 x 6 cm
Examples of this carte-de-visite photograph, evidently from the same sitting as A10, are held by the John Rylands Library of the University of Manchester (Acc.2013/42),
Examples are held also in the National Portrait Gallery London,
A digital image is available in the John Rylands Library Digital Collections (Elizabeth Gaskell Collection):
https://luna.manchester.ac.uk/luna/servlet/Gaskell2~91~1
Its image reference number is: JRL15030128
A note on copyright
The original images of Elizabeth Gaskell listed above are all, in themselves, out of copyright and in the ‘public domain’. This is because they were made sufficiently long ago for copyright protection over them to have expired. However, images reproducing the originals (e.g. photographs or digital images) may be in copyright, in which case the owners of such ‘secondary’ images may choose to restrict their use or to control access to them. Prospective users of such secondary images may need to seek permission and/or pay a charge. However, the secondary images listed here include four made by the Gaskell Society to which no restrictions apply (images A1; A4(b); A7(b) and A10(b) ).
On copyright, see: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/481194/c-notice-201401.pdf