'George Holt senior', Philip Westcott

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George Holt the elder came to Liverpool as a young man from Rochdale and became a successful cotton broker, founding the family fortunes. He financed the construction of the India Buildings in Liverpool in 1834 and founded Blackburne House as a school for girls ten years later.

He was sixty-one years old at the date of this portrait, shown at the Liverpool Academy in 1851. A replica commissioned from Westcott in 1864, three years after the sitter’s death, is also in the collection.