John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury and 1st Earl of Waterford
Engraver James Basire, the elder British
Sitter John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury and 1st Earl of Waterbury British
Publisher White, Cochrane, and Co. British
Not on view
Valiant service as a general during the reign of King Henry VI earned John Talbot the nicknames “Terror of the French” and the “English Achilles.” This print is based on a painting at Castle Ashby, Northamptonshire, a work that Horace Walpole, the eighteenth-century aesthete and collector, declared to be one of the oldest in England. As a second son, the sitter was born plain John Talbot. He gradually gained titles -- referenced here through the heraldry on his mantle -- through two marriages, and by inheriting them from a cousin, and infant niece.