Self-Portrait, c.1847-49. Oil on canvas, 101/8 x 8 inches (25.7 x 20.3 cm) Collection of The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, accession no. 774.
This early self-portrait of the young Walter Deverell makes an interesting contrast with the later chalk portrait by William Holman Hunt that better conveys the handsomeness that his contemporaries described. It is interesting that Deverell has chosen to paint himself in an outdoor setting against a stonewall surrounded by bushes and a climbing rose. Considering its supposed date of c.1849 these are not painted with the sharp detail that one might have expected from an aspiring member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. When Deverell was a young man W. M. Rossetti described him as “one of the handsomest young men I have known; belonging to a type not properly to be termed feminine, but which might rather be dubbed ‘troubadourish’” (Reminiscences, 148). One gets a better idea of what Rossetti meant by Deverell’s effeminate features by examining this early portrait. An inscription on the stretcher dates this picture “about 1849” when Deverell would have been twenty-two. He looks younger than this, however, and the fact that it is not painted in a P.R.B. manner suggests it may have been executed earlier c.1847.
Last modified 8 March 2022