Edwyn Arkwright

The sitter is identified very clearly, both on the album page and on the back of the mount, which he has in fact signed. There can be no doubt that this is the same man who appears playing the cello in the adjacent portrait in the album.

Arkwright was born at the family home, Hampton Court, near Leominster, in Herefordshire, England, on 2 May 1839. He was the fifth son of John Arkwright Esq. and Sarah, who was the eldest daughter of Sir Hungerford Hoskyns, Bart. His great-grandfather was the cotton-spinning industrialist Richard Arkwright. Educated at Harrow and Oxford, he matriculated at Merton College on 2 June 1858, aged 19, and graduated B.A. 1864, M.A. 1865. At some point he was ordained and in 1865 he was appointed Curate of Holy Trinity in Twickenham, Middlesex.

Edwyn Arkwright never married. In his later years he lived at Telemly on the Mustapha Hill, near the city of Algiers in Algeria, where he established a garden that became well-known amongst horticulturalists.

He died at his home in Algeria on 3 September 1922.

Photographer unidentified.

From an album compiled by Elizabeth Van de Weyer, the American wife of the Belgian ambassador to the Court of St James.