button to main menu Robert Southey
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Dove Cottage : 1994.81
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Painting, oil on canvas, portrait, Robert Southey, by Thomas Phillips, about 1818.
The original drawing for this portrait, commissioned by the publisher John Murray, was completed by November 1815, when Southey wrote to Mary Barker, 9 November 1815: 'The devil who owes me an old grudge has made me sit to Phillips for a picture for Murray.' Southey liked to grumble about the pains of being famous - after he became Poet Laureate. The mezzotint derived from the painting he declared to be 'bad, base, vile, vulgar, odious, hateful, detestable, abominable, execrable, and infamous. The rascally mezzotint scraper has made my face fat, fleshy, silly and sensual, and given the eyes an expression which I conceive to be more like two oysters in love than anything else'
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