Speed of Life: Happy Birthday Kate Bush

Born on 30 July: Emily Brontë (1818), the author of the classic novel, Wuthering Heights, and Kate Bush (1958), the composer of the pop song inspired by the novel. pic.twitter.com/utirkvhk04
— Prof. Frank McDonough (@FXMC1957) July 30, 2023

Emily Brontë

by Patrick Branwell Brontë

circa 1833

21 1/2 in. x 13 3/4 in.

From the National Portrait Gallery in London:

This portrait

"This painting, which was discovered at the same time as the famous group portrait of the Brontë Sisters (see NPG 1725), is apparently all that remains of a group portrait of the Brontës by Branwell Brontë of which it formed the right-hand part. The shape just visible to the left is almost certainly the shoulder and arm of Branwell Brontë, who also appears second from the right in the two other Brontë groups (NPG 1725, where he painted himself out, and the 'Gun Group'), his head forming the apex of a triangular composition. While the identification of the Brontë sisters in the surviving NPG group is now generally accepted, the identity of the sitter in this fragment is still disputed, and the claims of Emily and Anne have both been pressed.
In an interview in 1895, the Rev Nicholls told Clement Shorter that he had cut out a portrait of Emily, from a group picture, which he then destroyed, and gave the fragment to the Brontës' old servant, Martha Brown, during one of her visits to him in Ireland. [1] Martha Brown is known to have been in possession of this portrait of Emily in 1879, for in that year, Sir William Robertson Nicoll visited her in Haworth and saw it there:

'I shall never cease to regret that I did not buy the portrait she had of Emily Brontë, though I got a few other things. I did not buy it because I could not very well afford it, and it has been irrevocably lost. I have made many efforts since, and have been helped by many of Martha Brown's relatives. But that really fine and expressive painting has hopelessly disappeared, and now we have nothing that deserves to be called a likeness of that rarely endowed girl.' [2]"