Abraham Cowley

Image credit: National Portrait Gallery, London

How you can use this image

This image can be used for non-commercial research or private study purposes, and other UK exceptions to copyright permitted to users based in the United Kingdom under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, as amended and revised. Any other type of use will need to be cleared with the rights holder(s).

Review the copyright credit lines that are located underneath the image, as these indicate who manages the copyright (©) within the artwork, and the photographic rights within the image.

The collection that owns the artwork may have more information on their own website about permitted uses and image licensing options.

Review our guidance pages which explain how you can reuse images, how to credit an image and how to find images in the public domain or with a Creative Commons licence available.

Notes

Add or edit a note on this artwork that only you can see. You can find notes again by going to the ‘Notes’ section of your account.

A prolific poet, Cowley had a profound impact upon later seventeenth-century poetry. His reputation was short-lived however and had waned by the mid-eighteenth century. Educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, his first volume of verse, Poetical Blossoms, was published in 1633 when he was fifteen and included poems written from the age of ten. As a Royalist during the English civil wars he was deprived of his Cambridge fellowship in 1643. He joined King Charles I at Oxford before following Queen Henrietta Maria to France as her secretary. On the Restoration she granted him land. He studied medicine and became an MD in 1657, thereafter living in retirement, studying botany and writing essays.

National Portrait Gallery, London

London

Title

Abraham Cowley

Medium

oil on canvas

Measurements

H 74.9 x W 62.9 cm

Accession number

74

Acquisition method

Purchased, 1859

Work type

Painting

Tags

See a tag that’s incorrect or offensive? Challenge it and notify Art UK.

Help improve Art UK. Tag artworks and verify existing tags by joining the Tagger community.

National Portrait Gallery, London

St Martin’s Place, London, Greater London WC2H 0HE England

This venue is open to the public. Not all artworks are on display. If you want to see a particular artwork, please contact the venue.
View venue