Arthur Henry Hallam (1811–1833)

Arthur Henry Hallam, the brilliant young scholar whose early death at twenty-two inspired Tennyson"s In Memoriam, appears in this 1830 portrait at Eton College. Hallam was the closest friend of the future Poet Laureate during their years at Cambridge, and his sudden death from a cerebral hemorrhage in Vienna in 1833 produced one of the greatest elegiac poems in the English language. This portrait, painted when Hallam was nineteen, preserves the face of a young man whose intellectual promise was extinguished before it could be fulfilled.

Shee captures the youth and intellectual vivacity of Hallam, whose bright expression and open countenance suggest the charm that contemporaries universally remarked upon. The palette is lighter than Shee"s typical male portrait work, appropriate to the youth of the sitter. The handling shows particular care in the face, as if Shee sensed the exceptional quality of this young man"s character.