Madam, - On February 9th, 1796, a man with a passport identifying him as James Smith, an American merchant, applied to the French border police at Le Havre for permission to travel to Paris. According to surveillance records he had chestnut-brown hair and eyebrows, an aquiline nose, medium-sized mouth, round chin, an oval and slightly-pock marked face and a low forehead. At "5 pieds 4 pouces" he was just a soupçon under 5ft 8ins. However, his mission was not to sell American grain to the French Directory; he was the United Irishman Theobald Wolfe Tone, travelling on a false passport.
This description is probably the most accurate one we have of Tone's appearance, for the extant portraits contradict not only each other but his death mask, reproduced as plate 52 in Marianne Elliott's magisterial biography, Wolfe Tone: Prophet of Irish Independence. This features a distinctly eagle-shaped nose.
All known portrayals of Tone have been painstakingly researched in order to compile the "Descriptions of Tone" and "Iconography" sections in the recently published third and final volume of his complete Writings by Clarendon Press, Oxford. In two posthumous descriptions reprinted on page 482 of that volume, the nose in particular seems at odds with the face depicted in the miniature by George Engleheart featured in your Fine Arts page last Saturday, and due to go on sale in London next month. The first mentions "a thin face sallow and pock marked; eyes small, lively, bright. . .nose rather long I forgot the shape"; and the second: "a slight effeminate-looking man, with a hatchet face, a long aquiline nose, rather handsome and genteel-looking, with lank, straight hair combed down on his sickly red cheek". An art historian could assist with dating the hair and cravat (early rather than mid 1790s), but as fashions and personal tastes changed these are not reliable details to go on.
Scholars in the field generally accept that what is most likely to be the most accurate depiction of Tone is the polychrome miniature (in private possession) by his daughter-in-law Catherine Anne Tone (daughter of William Sampson), and thus appropriately used as the frontispiece for Marianne Elliott's book. As Tone died in 1798 and Catherine Anne had never known him, it is likely she was inspired by "a miniature in coloured chalks Tone had made for his wife in [ September] 1798" in Brest, discussed in a letter to the art historian W.G. Strickland from Catherine Anne's granddaughter. Yes, Tone may have noted with amusement in his diary (February 24th, 1796) that he "was a pretty fellow to negotiate with the French, pull down a monarchy and establish a republic", but this is not to be taken literally.
After a lengthy discussion of the Engleheart miniature, and in response to Ms Judy Harden's appeal for further information regarding likenesses of Tone, we take the liberty of suggesting that it is not a faithful portrayal of him, and if at all a heavily-romanticised one. Our experience as contributors to the Dictionary of Irish Biography project has encouraged a commitment to tracking down sources as accurately as possible, and portraiture frequently presents such dilemmas. We can only regret that Tone did not live as long as his fellow United Irishman Miles Byrne into the age of photography, while being thankful for the rich and colourful written legacy he left us. - Yours, etc,
Dr C.J. WOODS, (Editor, Writings of Theobald Wolfe Tone), Dr SYLVIE KLEINMAN, IRCHSS Post-Doctoral Fellow (Tone project), Department of Modern History, Trinity College, Dublin 2.