Austen Henry Layard
Sir Austen Henry Layard | |
|---|---|
Portrait of Layard c. 1890 | |
| Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs | |
| In office 12 February 1852 – 21 February 1852 | |
| Monarch | Queen Victoria |
| Prime Minister | Lord John Russell |
| Preceded by | The Lord Stanley of Alderley |
| Succeeded by | Lord Stanley |
| In office 15 August 1861 – 26 June 1866 | |
| Monarch | Queen Victoria |
| Prime Minister | The Viscount Palmerston The Earl Russell |
| Preceded by | The Lord Wodehouse |
| Succeeded by | Edward Egerton |
| First Commissioner of Works | |
| In office 9 December 1868 – 26 October 1869 | |
| Monarch | Queen Victoria |
| Prime Minister | William Ewart Gladstone |
| Preceded by | Lord John Manners |
| Succeeded by | Acton Smee Ayrton |
| Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire | |
| In office 1877–1880 | |
| Monarch | Queen Victoria |
| Preceded by | Sir Henry Elliot |
| Succeeded by | The Earl of Dufferin |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 5 March 1817 Paris, France |
| Died | 5 July 1894 (aged 77) London, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Political party | Liberal |
| Spouse | Mary Enid Evelyn Guest |
Sir Austen Henry Layard GCB PC (/lɛərd/; 5 March 1817 – 5 July 1894) was an English Assyriologist, traveller, cuneiformist, art historian, draughtsman, collector, politician and diplomat. He was born to a mostly English family in Paris and largely raised in Italy. He is best known as the excavator of Nimrud and of Nineveh, where he uncovered a large proportion of the Assyrian palace reliefs known, and in 1851 the library of Ashurbanipal. Most of his finds are now in the British Museum. He made a large amount of money from his best-selling accounts of his excavations.
He had a political career between 1852, when he was elected as a Member of Parliament, and 1869, holding various junior ministerial positions. He was then made ambassador to Madrid, then Constantinople, living much of the time in a palazzo he bought in Venice. During this period he built up a significant collection of paintings, which due to a legal loophole he had as a diplomat, he was able to extricate from Venice and bequeath to the National Gallery (as the Layard Bequest) and other British museums.