Introduction

Abstract

In the National Portrait Gallery in London, there are two quite different pictures of Benjamin Disraeli (1804–81). The first, an engraving by H. Robinson after an 1840 painting by A. E. Chalon, shows Disraeli with long, somewhat unkempt hair, an arrogant look approaching a sneer on his lips, inflamed eyes as if he had been up all night, a sloppy, creased coat, and an open shirt, his neck hardly concealed by a cravat. He cuts a most unconventional figure for a public man, and his mysterious, yet audacious air is emphasised by the fact that we cannot see his hands. In the second portrait, flatteringly painted by Sir John Everett Millais in 1881, the last year of Disraeli’s life, the former Prime Minister, in formal dress and bow tie with arms folded, is the picture of propriety. Looking very much younger than his years, confident and poised, with arms folded, neat, stern without being unduly severe, and clearly in complete control of his emotions, he is the embodiment of the successful statesman. His taut self-control and his polished manner (every hair of beard and head is in place) contrast so strikingly with the earlier portrait that it reminds us that Disraeli, more than most men, consciously created the public self that stares so imposingly at us.