Portrait oil painting on canvas,of Arkwright Sir Richard (1732-1792)/ by Lundgren Egron Sellif 1858. oval, 74x62cm in frame, 90x78x4cm. Copy of an oil painting, studio of Wright Joseph of Derby, derived from the full length oil by Wright of 1790, in the possession of the Arkwright family. Portrait, HS, in striped waistcoat. Arkwright Richard was a leading entreneur of the Industrial Revolution who invented the spinning frame, renamed the water frame and a rotary carding engine. He combined power, machinery, semi-skilled labour and the new raw material cotton to create mass-produced yarn. Lundgren Egron Sellif (1815-1875) was a Swedish watercolour painter who worked in England in the late 1850s-60s.

This is a copy after an original by Joseph Wright of Derby, attributed to Egron Sellif Lundgren. This copy was sent to South Kensington by Sir Thomas Bazley along with another painting (1858-77), a copy after a portrait of Samuel Crompton by Charles Allingham. It is unclear if these two copies sent by Bazley, 1858-77 and 1858-78, were painted by the same artist.

The ‘Belper Arkwright’, one of the original versions of this portrait by Wright of Derby, is now in the SMG Collection (1989-431).