A PORTRAIT MINIATURE OF SIR THOMAS TOBIN (1807 - 1881) WEARING LORD BYRON'S ALBANIAN DRESS Liverpool, England, signed Francis Hargreaves (British, 1804 - 1877) Watercolour on ivory Signed, dated and inscribed verso, Francis Hargreaves Pinxit / 1846 / Liverpool / For Arthur Lionel Tobin / From his father / Thomas Tobin / 1 January 1837 Presented within a rectangular fitted red leather, velvet lined case 14.5cm x 11.4cm Byron sat for Thomas Phillips (1770 - 1845) in 1813, wearing his iconic Albanian costume which he had bought four years earlier. The costume is now at Bowood House in Wiltshire. The portrait was welcomed with mixed reviews and yet applauded by the essayist and poet Leigh Hunt. Sir Thomas Tobin (1807 –1881) was a British merchant and descended from the Tobins of Liverpool, an important merchant family at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries. Thomas's grandfather, Patrick, was a native of Ireland and lived on the Isle of Man. Two of Patrick's sons, John and Thomas, became apprentice seamen and later master mariners. They built their prosperity on the slave trade but after 1 January 1808, when it became illegal to carry slaves, the Tobin family changed their business to the Palm Oil trade between West Africa and Liverpool.