EGG, AUGUSTUS (LEOPOLD)

born May 2, 1816, London died March 26, 1863, Algiers genre painter and actor. Egg studied at the Royal Academy, of which he became a member in 1860. He travelled in Italy with Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins in 1853. Egg was an excellent actor and played in Dickens' company of amateurs; one of his best parts was as John Want in Collins' Frozen Deep. As a painter, he was famous in his day for small anecdotal paintings, many of them on subjects from contemporary novelists, including Scott and Thackeray.