History:Narrative on reverse. Companion to portrait of Washington Irving (#5020). Originally owned by West's niece Aduella Price Norvell Bryant (#29950).
Notes:One of only two portraits of Shelley done from life. This one was a sketch made in Pisa, Italy, shortly before Shelley's death by drowning. The novelist Mary Shelley was his second wife. *Leigh Hunt (1784-1859) "This cabinet portrait first surfaced in West's estate, and was inherited by his niece, Aduella Price Norvell Bryant. It was Mrs. Bryant who identified the sitter as the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and sold it as such to Mrs. Nellie Porterfield Dunn. Mrs. Dunn published it in "Unknown Pictures of Shelley" in the October 1905 issue of Century magazine. West, however, made no mention of Shelley in his initial account of the Byron sitting, nor did he exhibit a portrait of Shelley in his lifetime. Newman White, in his biography, Shelley (1940), makes a convincing argument that the portrait is actually of Leigh Hunt. Hunt lived in Florence from 1823 to 1825, as did West. A lesser-known writer of the English Romantic movement, he was closely associated with Byron and Shelley. Hunt returned to England from Italy, and continued writing. He is best known for his fanciful poem, Abou-ben-Adhem, and for his critical essays. Hunt outlived his Romantic contemporaries to become a well-known Victorian writer. A much-praised play, A Legend of Florence, was a favorite of Queen Victoria's."** **Pennington, Estill Curtis, William Edward West 1788-1857 Kentucky Painter (City of Washington: National Portrait Gallery-Smithsonian Institution, 1985), 80-81.
