ABSTRACT
Byron's was a face to faint for, and faint the ladies did. Not all or most surviving descriptions of Byron are by women. In numbers and in passionate enthusiasm the men have it. In its detailed observation, perspicacious insight, and intuitive analysis, Thomas Lawrence's verbal sketch rivals Byron's own magnificent pen portraits of Gibbon, Voltaire, Rousseau, Sheridan, and Napoleon. Thomas Phillips and Richard Westall were the two best-known artists to paint Byron. Phillips's Byron portraits puzzled most of the poet's friends. Byron's publisher John Murray wished to have an engraving of his bestselling poet to preface a revised seventh edition of cantos 1 and 2 of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Having painted a half-imaginary Byron in 1813, Westall illustrated the poems with its features. In his poem Alfred Westall defended Byron's recently published and immediately notorious Cain. Westall completed his Byron portrait late in 1813.
