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| Daniel Maclise The Woodranger 1838 oil on canvas Royal Academy of Arts, London |
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| George Hayter Charles Stuart, 1st Baron Stuart de Rothesay 1830 oil on canvas Government Art Collection, London |
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| William Mulready Mary Wright, the Carpenter's Daughter ca. 1828 oil on panel Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Henry Wyatt A Regency Lady 1828 oil on canvas The Wilson, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire |
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| Christian Albrecht Jensen Portrait of Sir Augustus Foster 1825 oil on canvas Government Art Collection, London |
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| George Hayter George James Welbore Agar-Ellis, 1st Baron Dover 1825 oil on canvas (degraded bitumen pigment visible in background) National Trust, Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire |
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| Charles Willson Peale Portrait of naturalist and taxidermist Charles Waterton 1824 oil on canvas National Portrait Gallery, London |
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| Thomas Lawrence Harriet Anne, Countess of Belfast ca. 1822-23 oil on canvas Ulster Museum, Belfast |
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| George Garrard A Gardener at Bramham ca. 1822 oil on canvas Temple Newsam House, Leeds |
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| George Garrard Mrs Brown, Housekeeper at Bramham ca. 1822 oil on canvas Temple Newsam House, Leeds |
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| Francisco Goya Portrait of Juan Antonio Cuervo 1819 oil on canvas Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio |
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| George Henry Harlow Portrait of the Duchess of Kent (mother of Queen Victoria) ca. 1818 oil on canvas Colchester and Ipswich Museums |
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| James Lonsdale Portrait of Lady Anne Hamilton 1815 oil on canvas Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Peter De Wint Portrait of Mrs Peter De Wint ca. 1815 oil on canvas Usher Gallery, Lincoln |
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| Johann Erdmann Hummel Portrait of Luise Mila ca. 1810-15 oil on canvas Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin |
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| Samuel De Wilde Thomas Russell in The Mayor of Garratt, a play by Samuel Foote ca. 1810-11 oil on canvas Yale Center for British Art |
"Originality is any conception of things, taken immediately from nature, and neither borrowed from, nor common to, others. To deserve this appellation, the copy must be both true and new. But herein lies the difficulty of reconciling a seeming contradiction in the terms of the explanation. For as anything to be natural must be referable to a consistent principle, and as the face of things is open and familiar to all, how can any imitation be new and striking, without being liable to the charge of extravagance, distortion, and singularity? And, on the other hand, if it has no such peculiar and distinguishing characteristic to set it off, it cannot possibly rise above the level of the trite and common-place. This objection would indeed hold good and be unanswerable, if nature were one thing, or if the eye or mind comprehended the whole of it at a single glance; in which case, if an object had been once seen and copied in the most cursory and mechanical way, there could be no farther addition to, or variation from, this idea, without obliquity and affectation; but nature presents an endless variety of aspects, of which the mind seldom takes in more than a part or than one view at a time; and it is in seizing on this unexplored variety, and giving some one of these new but easily recognized features, in its characteristic essence, and according to the peculiar bent and force of the artist's genius, that true originality consists. Romney, when he was first introduced into Sir Joshua's gallery, said, 'there was something in his portraits which had been never seen in the art before, but which every one must be struck with as true and natural the moment he saw it.' This could not happen if the human face did not admit of being contemplated in several points of view, or if the hand were necessarily faithful to the suggestions of sense. Two things serve to perplex this question; first, the construction of language, from which, as one object is represented by one word, we imagine that it is one thing, and that we can no more conceive differently of the same object than we can pronounce the same word in different ways, without being wrong in all but one of them; secondly, the very nature of our individual impressions puts a deception upon us; for, as we know no more of any given object than we see, we very pardonably conclude that we see the whole of it, and have exhausted inquiry at the first view, since we can never suspect the existence of that which, from our ignorance and incapacity, gives us no intimation of itself. Thus, if we are shown an exact likeness of a face, we give the artist credit chiefly for dexterity of hand; we think that any one who has eyes can see a face; that one person sees it just like another, that there can be no mistake about it (as the object and the image are in our notion the same) – and that if there is any departure from our version of it, it must be purely fantastical and arbitrary. Multum abludit imago [the image differs greatly]. We do not look beyond the surface; or rather we do not see into the surface, which contains a labyrinth of difficulties and distinctions, that not all the effects of art, of time, patience, and study, can master and unfold."
– William Hazlitt (1778-1830), from Originality (1830)