Rudolph Lehmann, 1819 - 1905 Portrait of Robert Lowe, 1st Viscount Sherbrooke, Gcb, Pc, 1811 – 1892

Rudolph Lehmann, 1819 - 1905

Portrait of Robert Lowe, 1st Viscount Sherbrooke, GCB, PC, 1811 – 1892

Robert Lowe, 1st Viscount Sherbrooke, GCB, PC,

Signed/Inscribed:

inscribed on a label on the reverse " The Rt Hon Robert Lowe"

oil on canvas

30 x 25in. (76 x 63.5cm.)

Provenance

Caroline Sneyd, second wife of Robert Lowe, 1st Viscount Sherbrooke , and thence by descent

Literature

There is a study for this portrait in the British Museum catalogue number : 1906,0419.26 head and shoulders turned almost to right, and looking to right. 1874 Black, red and white chalk, on brown paper

Notes

Lowe, Robert, Viscount Sherbrooke (1811–1892), politician, born at Bingham, Nottinghamshire, on 4 December 1811, was the second son of Robert Lowe (1780–1845), rector of that parish and prebendary of Southwell, and Ellen (d. 1852), second daughter and coheir of the Revd Reginald Pyndar, rector of Madresfield in Worcestershire. He was an albino, and his eyes were extremely sensitive to light; moreover, he had imperfect vision in both eyes, and one was useless for reading. At Winchester College, which he entered as a commoner in 1825, he was much bullied, and unable to identify his tormentors; later in life, too, he suffered from his inability to recognize people, especially in large groups. Lowe was, however, very intelligent and very determined. Conscious that his logical mind and taste for scholarship would be his best assets in life, he responded to his affliction by developing great powers of memory and labour. He also became very self-reliant. Confident in his superior intellectual ability and the correctness of his views, he quickly developed a talent for blunt, fearless assertions, and never lost the clever schoolboy's pleasure in undermining established orthodoxies and pricking complacency. He matriculated at University College, Oxford, on 16 June 1829. At Oxford he spoke often at the union, adopting unpopularly radical opinions and relishing the controversy and notoriety that this brought him. He retained his intellectual ambitions too; but though he took a first class in classics in 1833, he achieved only a second in mathematics, which he later claimed was unsuited to his questioning mind and imperfect eyesight.

Seeking a career

The church was among the institutions against which the young Lowe rebelled, and so that career was closed to him (in 1841 he was to conduct a pamphlet war with the Tractarians about the interpretation of the Thirty-Nine Articles). He decided to read for the bar, and so remained in Oxford as a private tutor until a lay fellowship at Magdalen College, for which he was eligible, became vacant in 1835. But he resigned this after his impetuous marriage to Georgiana (d. 1884), second daughter of George Orred of Tranmere, Cheshire, on 29 March 1836. In order to make a living, he had to return to private tutoring. He quickly developed a reputation as the most efficient coach in the university, but the work was hard. His experience of it intensified his contempt for the low general standard of university education and his animosity to the complacency of college fellows, which he thought was caused by the protection given to them by lavish college endowments. It also convinced him that teaching was drudgery. Having failed to be appointed professor of Greek at Glasgow University in 1838 he gave up hope of an academic career, and in 1840 went to London to resume his law studies. He was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn on 28 January 1842. Shortly afterwards he decided to emigrate to Australia in the hope of making a quick fortune at the Sydney bar, a decision which he later claimed was the consequence of mistaken medical advice that he must expect to be blind in seven years.

In Australia

Lowe spent eight years in Australia. He was quickly drawn into New South Wales politics, at first in the hope