Douglas William Jerrold

George Herbert Watkins

Late 1850s

Albumen print

7 x 5½ inches

Reproduced with permission of The National Portrait Gallery, London; NPG P301 (121); purchased 1965

This carte-de-visite photograph shows Bennett at about the age of 35; he looks much older than his years and the print gives little sense of his mischievous sense of humour, even if his hair, much noted by his contemporaries, is a little over-long. There are no other confirmed likenesses of him, although mocking images of hirsute artists, perhaps self-portraits, recur throughout his cartoons.

[Click on image to enlarge it.]

Image capture , formatting, and text by Simon Cooke