CC0 · no rights reserved
The Life of Buckingham
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art. Free to download, adapt and use — no permission needed.
About this work
Augustus Leopold Egg’s The Life of Buckingham depicts a fictional moment in the debauched, roguish life of George Villiers (1628–1687), 2nd Duke of Buckingham (seated at the center, wearing white). Although the scene is invented, the merrymakers and courtesans depicted around the table (among them King Charles II, to Buckingham’s right) were characters the duke would have personally known and were familiar to Victorian audiences who delighted in the cautionary tale of excess.
Cleveland Museum of Art’s own descriptionCredit lineThe Life of Buckingham, c. 1855. Augustus Leopold Egg (British, 1816-c. 1863). Oil on board ; framed: 54.1 x 64.5 x 10.2 cm (21 5/16 x 25 3/8 x 4 in.); unframed: 30.5 x 40.5 cm (12 x 15 15/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Norman O. Stone and Ella A. Stone Memorial Fund, 2014.373
