Published: London, Jas. Bretherton, 14 July 1784.
Description: etching, full-length portrait, 175 x 113 mm. (plate size).
Condition: very good.

Rare portrait of Sydney

A fine portrait of Lord Sydney just prior to his involvement in the plan to equip the First Fleet for Botany Bay. This is a rare and rather sensitive portrayal of Sydney, who was for many years dismissed by historians but has lately found favour in the more nuanced work of Andrew Tink and others.

Thomas Townshend, First Viscount Sydney (1733-1800), was a politician his entire life, but spent the 1770s in opposition (not least for his tepid support for the American cause). In 1783 he was granted his peerage, and at the end of the year was made Home Secretary under William Pitt. It was while serving as Home Secretary that Townshend became heavily involved in the First Fleet, and ultimately led Governor Phillip to name the new township after him (David Collins dedicated his book to Lord Sydney as the “originator of the plan of colonization for New South Wales”).

The portrait is by James Sayers (1748-1823), an attorney of independent means who quit his profession to become a political caricaturist. “His allegiance was with the Tory William Pitt and he directed his satire against Charles James Fox and his Coalition Ministry. Underlining the power of the political print in the late eighteenth century, Fox is said to have declared that Sayers’ caricatures had done him ‘more mischief than the debates in Parliament or the works of the Press’” (NPG UK, online).

References: ADB (“Arthur Phillip”); National Portrait Gallery (online); ODNB; Trove.