George Herbert: Poems

Legacy

Memorial window to Herbert and Nicholas Ferrar in St Andrew's Church, Bemerton

The earliest portrait of Herbert was engraved long after his death by Robert White[47] for Walton's biography of the poet in 1674. Now in London's National Portrait Gallery, it served as basis for later engravings, such as those by White's apprentice John Sturt and by Henry Hoppner Meyer in 1829.

Among later artistic commemorations is William Dyce's oil painting of "George Herbert at Bemerton" (1860) in the Guildhall Art Gallery, London. The poet is pictured in his riverside garden, prayerbook in hand.[48] Over the meadows is Salisbury Cathedral, where he used to join in the musical evensong; his lute leans against a stone bench and against a tree a fishing rod is propped, a reminder of his first biographer, Isaac Walton.[49] There is also a musical reference in Charles West Cope's "George Herbert and his mother" (1872), which is in Gallery Oldham:[50] the mother points a poem out to him in a room that has a virginal in the background.

Most representations of Herbert, however, are in stained glass windows, of which there are several in churches and cathedrals. They include Westminster Abbey,[51] Salisbury Cathedral[52] and All Saints' Church, Cambridge.[52] His own St Andrew's Church in Bemerton installed in 1934 a memorial window, which he shares with Nicholas Ferrar. In addition, there is a statue of Herbert in his canonical robes, based in part on the Robert White portrait, in a niche on the West Front of Salisbury Cathedral.


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