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Who is William Rothenstein?

Portrait Photograph (circa 1894)

The English artist and educator Will Rothenstein (1872-1945) shown in an albumen cabinet card, circa 1894, around the time he made at least one portrait of George Moore and several sketches listed elsewhere in this Iconography.

Rothenstein studied art at the Académie Julian in Paris (1889–1893), around fifteen years after George Moore enrolled there. This photograph shows the young artist upon his return to England, not long before publisher Walter Scott commissioned him to make a portrait of Moore for a frontispiece (used years later by publisher Horace Liveright).

Also in the 1890s, both men contributed to The Yellow Book. In 1895, Max Beerbohm caricatured Rothenstein “laying down the law” to a number of notables including, in the lower left, George Moore on caution.