Edward Matthew Ward

A carte-de-visite portrait of the English narrative painter Edward Matthew Ward (1816-1879), best known for his murals in the Palace of Westminster depicting episodes in British history from the English Civil War to the Glorious Revolution.

His wife Henrietta Ward was also a historical painter. According to her memoirs, her husband ‘was such an admirable talker that wherever he was conversation never flagged’ [Mrs E.M. Ward’s Reminiscences, 1911]. The diarist Arthur Munby, however, remembered him as ‘a big gross man, kindly and weakwilled, one would say, but a loud incessant talker, and his conversation not cultivated or brilliant’ [Munby, Man of Two Worlds, 1972].

Photographed by John and Charles Watkins of London.