Portrait of Samuel Carter Hall, Esq, F. S. A ,1861

A stipple engraving of Samuel Carter Hall, Esq. F. S. A, (1800-1889), engraved by D. J. pound after a photograph by Mayall, published by the Illustrated News of the World, 13 Catherine Street, Strand, 1861.

A black and white rectangular stipple engraving of a white middle-aged male, seated and positioned to the right, looking out of the frame. He has dark eyebrows and white ear-length hair and is dressed in a dark frock coat with a white shirt with an upright collar and a dark necktie. His left hand is positioned on top of an upright cane, and in his right hand are a pair of spectacles attached to a cord around his neck. Small text immediately below the image reads ‘Engraved by D. J. Pound from a Photograph by Mayall’. Below that in larger type reads ‘SAMUEL CARTER HALL, ESQ. F.S.A.’ At the very bottom of the page, text reads ‘THE DRAWING ROOM PORTRAIT GALLERY OF EMINENT PERSONAGES’ followed in italic scroll by ‘Presented with the Illustrated News of the World’ and plain text ’13 Catherine Street Strand’.

Samuel Carter Hall (1800-1889) was an Irish-born journalist, most famously editor of the Arts Journal. His mother, Ann Kent, was born in Ottery St. Mary, Devon, and his parents married in Topsham, on 6 April 1790. As editor of the Arts Journal, “he demanded full editorial freedom and secured a written statement…that the publisher would neither try to influence, nor interfere with what Hall chose to print.” ( Mancoff, D.). He was particularly unimpressed with the Pre-Raphaelites, publishing several attacks against the movement. Alongside his editorship of this print—widely regarded in the 19th Century as the most important magazine on art— he also published a number of books, including The Book of Gems: the modern poets and artists of Great Britain (1838), the beautifully-illustrated The Book of British Ballads (1844), and six volumes of Ireland – Its Scenery, Character and History.

Hall's character was much satirised, with many citing him as the inspiration for the character Pecksniff in Dicken’s Martin Chuzzlewit: “the egregious Mr. Pecksniff (as Samuel Carter Hall was commonly known to his acquaintances since the publication of Martin Chuzzlewit ten years before). Hall was a genuine comedy figure. Such oily and voluble sanctimoniousness needed no modification to be fitted to appear before the footlights in satirical drama…No one who knew him took him seriously.” (Hawthorn, J., Hawthorne and His Circle.)

He lived at Avenue Villa, 50, Holland Street, Kensington (as listed on this invitation to his Golden Wedding Anniversary). His wife, Anna Maria (1800-1881), was a writer and novelist, who also worked on the aforementioned volumes of Irish history, and was a benefactor of the Governesses’ Institute, the Nightingale Fund, and women’s rights.

The engraver, Daniel John Pound (1820-1894), specialised in recreating carte-de-visite photographs taken by John Jabez Edwin Mayall and other photographers, for a number of publications including the London Printing and Publishing Company and the Supplement to The Illustrated News of the World. Mayall (1813-1901) was born in Sussex but travelled to North America in 1842 where he developed his experience in daguerreotype photography, later becoming so well-established that he took the first photographs of Queen Victoria.

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