Portrait of George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans], 1865. Chalk on paper, (51.4 x 38.1 cm). Collection of National Portrait Gallery, London, accession no. NPG669.
Burton and Eliot were good friends of long standing. He had first met her and her partner George Henry Lewes in 1858 when he was living in Munich. After his move to London in 1859 he visited them frequently at their home, initially in Marylebone, but after 1863 at The Priory, their home near Regent’s Park. In 1864 Burton accompanied the pair on a trip to Italy. In February 1864 he asked Eliot to sit for her portrait and despite having refused a similar request from G. F. Watts she consented. Burton’s portrait was completed in 1865 and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1867. Hodge has written about this portrait: “Burton’s masterful chalk portrait captures Eliot’s distinctive facial characteristics and gives a sense of her intelligence and calm nature. He admired her wit and intellect and hugely enjoyed his conversations with her” (42). Eliot was apparently pleased with the portrait and it remained in her final home at 4 Cheyne Walk in Chelsea until her death on December 22, 1880. In 1883 her husband John Walter Cross commissioned the French printmaker Paul Rajon to engrave it before he presented the portrait to the National Portrait Gallery in London.
This chalk drawing of Eliot is said to be her best likeness. When it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1867 the critic of The Spectatorwrote: “Mr. F. W. Burton, of the Old Water Colour Society, appears here in a new light, with a portrait in chalks of ‘The Author of Adam Bede’ (735). The drawing (which gives the head only) is distinguished from all around it of the same class, by its entire freedom from affectation, its purpose-like air, and the strength and honesty of its work” (526). When Henry James viewed it at the National Portrait Gallery in 1897 he commented, “The great G.E. herself is both sweet and superior, and has a delightful expression in her large, long, pale equine face.”
Bibliography
Hodge, Anne. “The gilded beam on the humming-bird’s throat’: Burton’s portraiture.” In Frederic William Burton For the Love of Art. Dublin: National Gallery of Ireland, 2017, 36-47.
“Art. The Royal Academy.” The Spectator 40 (May 11, 1867): 525-526.
Last modified 11 April 2022