William Wilberforce, 1828

British parliamentarian and social reformer William Wilberforce (1759–1833) was renowned for his high principles and great personal charm. His life’s work was as parliamentary leader of the abolitionist movement. Having campaigned tirelessly for twenty years to end the slave trade, declaring to Parliament in 1791 that ‘never, never will we desist till we ... extinguish every trace of this bloody traffic’, Wilberforce’s Bill was eventually passed with a standing ovation in 1807. He then campaigned for the total abolition of slavery, dying one month before the Slavery Abolition Act was passed in 1833.

This portrait was begun in 1828, after Wilberforce, suffering from extreme skeletal degeneration, retired from Parliament on account of ill health. His constant discomfort helps explain the awkward pose and unfinished state of this painting. With only one sitting, Sir Thomas Lawrence captured both ‘the intellectual power and winning sweetness of the veteran statesman’.

National Portrait Gallery, London Given by executors of Sir Robert Harry Inglis, 2nd Bt, 1857
© National Portrait Gallery, London