Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton, First Earl Lytton thumbnail 1
Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton, First Earl Lytton thumbnail 2
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Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton, First Earl Lytton

Oil Painting
1876 (painted)
Artist/Maker
Millais, John Everett (Sir) (artist)
Place of origin
Great Britain (painted)

This portrait of Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl Lytton (1831-91), statesman and poet, was commissioned by John Forster, who is best known as Charles Dickens's biographer. It was to be a reminder of his friend, who was about to set sail to India to take up the appointment of Viceroy. Sadly, Forster died before he saw the portrait. It is life-size and outstanding for the directness of the subject's outward-looking gaze. When it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1876, the Art Journal considered it to be one of the 'notable portraits of the year'. Millais was the most celebrated portrait painter in Britain at the time that he painted it.

Object details

Categories
Paintings
Portraits
Paintings
Object type
Oil painting
Titles
  • Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton, First Earl Lytton
  • Lord Lytton, Viceroy of India (popular title)
Materials and techniques
Oil on canvas
Oil
Canvas
Oil Painting
Brief description
Oil painting depicting Lord Lytton, Viceroy of India, by Sir John Everett Millais. Great Britain, 1876.
Physical description
Oil on canvas, three quarter length portrait of a bearded man with left hand on hip.
Dimensions
  • Estimate height: 45in
  • Estimate width: 29.25in
  • Frame height: 1437mm
  • Frame width: 1036mm
  • Frame depth: 93mm
Dimensions taken from Catalogue of British Oil Paintings 1820-1860, Ronald Parkinson, Victoria and Albert Museum, London: HMSO, 1990
Credit line
Bequeathed by Mrs Eliza Ann Forster
Object history
Bequeathed by Mrs Eliza Ann Forster, wife of John Forster, 1894. Accoding to the registered file, MA/1/D2023/5 this painting was bequeathed by a codicil in 1876, and executed in 1894.
Subjects depicted
Portraits
Lytton, Edward Robert (Lord)
Summary
This portrait of Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl Lytton (1831-91), statesman and poet, was commissioned by John Forster, who is best known as Charles Dickens's biographer. It was to be a reminder of his friend, who was about to set sail to India to take up the appointment of Viceroy. Sadly, Forster died before he saw the portrait. It is life-size and outstanding for the directness of the subject's outward-looking gaze. When it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1876, the Art Journal considered it to be one of the 'notable portraits of the year'. Millais was the most celebrated portrait painter in Britain at the time that he painted it.
Bibliographic references
  • Fagence Cooper, Suzanne, Pre Raphaelite Art in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, V&A Publications, 2003. 176p., ill. ISBN I 85177 393 2
  • Catalogue of British Oil Paintings 1820-1860, Ronald Parkinson, Victoria and Albert Museum, London: HMSO, 1990, pp. 190-191
  • Lord Lytton 'was a strange and troubling choice (actually, only fourth on Lord Salisbury's short list) to exercise paramount authority over a starving subcontinent of 250 million people'. He was the Viceroy of India during a period of only four years but was in office during the Great Famine of 1876-78 in which an estimated 5.5 million people in South and Southwestern India died of starvation. Occurring in part as a result of widespread drought, the commodification and export of grain by the colonial government also played a key role as record amounts of crops were shipped to England, leaving Indian people to starve. Some British citizens such as the humanitarian and author William Digby agitated for policy reforms and relief, but Lord Lytton opposed such changes. There were accusations 'that Englishmen in India accepted famine as a salutary cure for over-population'. Lytton justified his stringencies to the Legislative Council in 1877 by arguing that the Indian population "has a tendency to increase more rapidly than the food it raises from the soil"'. A Famine Commission was eventually set up to provide relief but Lytton’s reputation in the history of India is today widely recognised as being maleficent. “All through the autumn of 1876, while the vital kharif crop was withering in the fields of southern India, Lytton had been absorbed in organizing the immense Imperial Assemblage in Delhi to proclaim Victoria Empress of India (Kaiser-i-Hind). [The celebrations] included a week-long feast for 68,000 officials, satraps and maharajas: the most colossal and expensive meal in world history. An English journalist later estimated that 100,000 of the Queen-Empress's subjects starved to death in Madras and Mysore in the course of Lytton's spectacular durbar. Indians in future generations justifiably would remember him as their Nero”. Excerpts from Davis, Mike (2001), Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famine and the Making of the Third World, London; New York: Verso Books.
Collection
Prints, Drawings & Paintings Collection
Accession number
F.146

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Record createdJanuary 7, 2004
Record URL
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O88732/edward-robert-bulwer-lytton-first-oil-painting-millais-john-everett/
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