1st Decb 1839 D'Orsay fecit [signed in plate].
London, Published by John Mitchell, 33, Old Bond St. J. Graf, Printer to the Queen.
Lithograph on india paper, india 210 x 160mm. 8¼ x 6¼".
Portrait of James Sheridan Knowles (1784 - 1862), the Irish dramatist and actor, born in Cork. He first published a ballad entitled 'The Welsh Harper', which, set to music, was very popular. His talents secured him the friendship of William Hazlitt, who introduced him to Charles Lamb and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In 1810 he wrote 'Leo', in which Edmund Kean acted with great success. In William Tell (1825), Knowles wrote for William Charles Macready one of his favourite parts. In 1832, his best-known play, The Hunchback, was produced at Covent Garden. From a series of portraits by Count Alfred Guillaume Gabriel d'Orsay (1801 - 1852), Paris-born artist and gentleman of fashion. His profile sketches of his contemporaries, to the number of 125, include among them nearly all the literary, artistic, and fashionable celebrities of that time.
See O'Donoghue.
[Ref: 21822]  £60.00