You’ve landed on Genius Fan’s first Genius Faces post. Welcome.
What is the Genius Faces post category about?
This series is all about portraits of people from the Eighteenth century (and people from other centuries relevant to that period). Most history blogs show the same portraits, clipped from elsewhere on the internet. I’m using the same images, just drawing them myself. Think about it. How long do we spend looking at an image of someone, say Britain’s first Prime Minister Robert Walpole, when it appears on an internet page? I think most of us see the image in an instant, maybe a second at most, then look away at the accompanying text. Unless the portrait shows something that catches our eye, a huge nose, no teeth, an enormous wig, a pretty face…then we may not even remember the face. Drawing a face helps to remember a person. Would I recognise Walpole if I met him in the street, coming out of KFC with a bucket for two in his arms on a Saturday evening? If he was wearing a wig, yeah, I would!
Portrait Summary
- Subject: This is Sir Robert Walpole, Britain’s first Prime Minister, whose administration ran from 1721 to 1742. He was 64 years of age when the portrait was painted and had been in office for 19 years at that point. This may be the most-commonly known portrait of Walpole.
- Artist: The Walpole painting is by Jean Baptiste van Loo (1684-1745), a French artist who painted scenes and portraits and church interiors in France and Italy. He painted the Walpole portrait in 1740 during a visit to England between 1737 and 1742.
- More information: See the National Portrait Gallery.
- PMs on the Pan: Read Walpole’s entry in PMs on the Pan
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