Austen Henry Layard

Sir Austen Henry Layard
Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
In office
12 February 1852 – 21 February 1852
MonarchQueen Victoria
Prime MinisterLord John Russell
Preceded byThe Lord Stanley of Alderley
Succeeded byLord Stanley
In office
15 August 1861 – 26 June 1866
MonarchQueen Victoria
Prime MinisterThe Viscount Palmerston
The Earl Russell
Preceded byThe Lord Wodehouse
Succeeded byEdward Egerton
First Commissioner of Works
In office
9 December 1868 – 26 October 1869
MonarchQueen Victoria
Prime MinisterWilliam Ewart Gladstone
Preceded byLord John Manners
Succeeded byActon Smee Ayrton
Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire
In office
1877–1880
MonarchQueen Victoria
Preceded bySir Henry Elliot
Succeeded byThe Earl of Dufferin
Personal details
Born5 March 1817 (1817-03-05)
Paris, France
Died5 July 1894 (1894-07-06) (aged 77)
London, England
NationalityBritish
Political partyLiberal
SpouseMary 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.[1][2]

  1. ^ "Austen Henry Layard", National Gallery
  2. ^ Rivista enciclopedica contemporanea, Editore Francesco Vallardi, Milan, (1913), entry by UN, pages 16-17.