Thomas Frognal Dibdin

Phillips's portrait of Thomas Frognall Dibdin from 1818 depicts the bibliographer whose rhapsodic descriptions of rare books in the Bibliomania (1809) and Bibliographical Decameron (1817) had created the fashion for book collecting that made early nineteenth-century England the world's most active market for rare manuscripts and early printed books. Dibdin's extravagant prose style made bibliography exciting to a general audience and his own collection ambitions were backed by his patron, the book-mad Earl Spencer. The portrait documents a figure who was simultaneously a significant contributor to the history of scholarship and a key participant in the early Victorian bibliomaniac culture that transformed the market for rare books.

The portrait presents the bibliographer with the animated expression appropriate to a man whose enthusiasm for his subject was legendary. Phillips's handling is straightforward, with the sitter's personality conveyed through facial expression and pose. Books or scholarly attributes may appear as appropriate identifying props.