Portrait of William Bennett, by Charles Allston Collins (1828-1873). 1850. Oil on panel. 13 x 10 5/8 inches (33 x 27 cm). Collection of Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, accession no. WA1894.11. Image courtesy of the Ashmolean Museum via Art Uk, reproduced for purposes of non-commercial academic research. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Collins exhibited the portrait at the Royal Academy in 1851, no. 718. It was painted at the same time as Collins's Convent Thoughts, as a companion picture to Millais's Portrait of Thomas Combe. Collins's portrait is painted in the meticulously detailed early Pre-Raphaelite style. William Bennett was the uncle of Martha Combe on her mother's side. Mr. Bennett had been living with the Combes in Oxford for some time at that point. In 1893 Mrs Thomas Combe bequeathed the painting to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
Mr. Bennett association with the Pre-Raphaelites is perhaps best remembered by his offer to purchase, at the urging of J. E. Millais, William Holman Hunt's A Converted British Family Sheltering a Christian Missionary from the Persecution of the Druids of 1850, which he would then present as a gift to Thomas Combe. Combe would not go along with this proposal, however, and in the end purchased Hunt's painting himself.
Bibliography
Maas, Rupert. "The life of Charles Allston Collins (1828-73): and his painting The Devout Childhood of St Elizabeth of Hungary." The British Art Journal XV, No. 3 (Spring 2015): 42.
Portrait of William Bennett. Art UK. Web. 14 September 2024.
Whiteley, Jon, Catherine Casley, Colin Harrison, Marlia Mundell Mango, Timothy Newberry, Christian Rumelin, Catherine Whistler, and Timothy Wilson. The Ashmolean Museum: Complete Illustrated Catalogue of Paintings. Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 2004. 47.
Created 14 September 2024