Overall: 30 x 22 x 8 1/4 inches (76.2 x 55.9 x 21 cm)
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1977.14.3
Gallery Label:
The Anglo-Irish Tory statesman Robert Stewart, 2nd Marquess of Londonderry (1769-1822), was better known during his political career by the subsidiary or courtesy title of Viscount Castlereagh. Unlike the marquessate he inherited from his father in 1821, this courtesy title did not disqualify him from sitting in the House of Commons. He was a senior minister in successive governments throughout the period of the Napoleonic Wars, first as secretary of war from 1807 to 1809 and then as foreign secretary in the administration of Lord Liverpool from 1812 to 1822, when he committed suicide. It was Castlereagh who selected the remote mid-Atlantic island colony of St. Helena as a place of banishment for the captive Emperor Napoleon. Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2005
