Lot 91: Attributed to Friedrich Schilcher , Austrian 1811-1881 Portrait of John Edward Trelawny oil on canvas

indistinctly signed lower right oil on canvas

100.5 by 79cm., 39½ by 31in.

Sale: Christie's, London, 8 October 1998, lot 183 (as Portrait of a Greek Man in National Costume)

The sitter for this portrait has been identified as Edward John Trelawny, the novelist, biographer, adventurer and close friend of Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. He was part of their Pisan circle of friends, and organised Shelley's cremation after his death from drowning following a sailing accident in 1822.

Trelawny was a dashing and controversial figure throughout his adventurous life, taking part in the Greek War of Independence at Byron's request, and tragically making arrangements for Byron's body and papers after the latter's death at Missolonghi. Known as being the last friend and companion of both Shelley and Byron, Trelawny returned briefly to England for his father's funeral in 1820, after which he published his Adventures of a Younger Son (1831) and travelled through the United States between 1833-35. Returning to England, Trelawny received a hero's welcome, and became involved in politics and the intricacies of high society. Bored of the daily dramas of his new life, Trelawny eloped with Augusta Goring to Putney, in London, and then Usk, a small country town in Monmouthshire.

After the disintegration of his marriage and the publication of his second book, Recollections, Trelawny moved back to London and then to the village of Sompting in West Sussex. He lived a quiet while visitor-rich life in Sompting with his devoted daughter Letitia, as illustrated in John Everett Millais' The North-West Passage, until the end of his life in 1888.