3-079-560 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Thomas Combe in Cloak and Mortar Board, from an album compiled by Sir John Everett Millais, 30 June 1860. The publisher Thomas Combe was born in Leicester in 1797. He was one of the earliest patrons of the Pre-Raphaelites, and his bequest of their works to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, is notable among collections formed in the 19th century in that it remains largely intact. In 1838 Combe became Superintendent of the Clarendon Press at Oxford University, a post he held until his death. He was a genial, hospitable man of strong religious convictions, a friend and ardent supporter of the Tractarians; John Henry Newman officiated at his marriage in 1840. Combe and his wife Martha (1806-93) were active in many forms of charitable work, and Combe, who edited Illustrations of Baptismal Fonts (London, 1844) for the Cambridge Camden Society, financed a number of local ecclesiological projects.