2-356-450 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

'The Death of Chatterton', 1856 (1900). This was the first great success of the British Pre-Raphaelite painter Henry Wallis. It was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1856. It depicts Thomas Chatterton, an 18th century poet who committed suicide aged just seventeen and was a romantic hero to struggling young artists in the mid 19th century. The model used for the painting was the novelist and poet George Meredith.