John Hunter and his painters

Selwyn Taylor DM MCh FRCS Honorary Curator of Portraits The Royal College of Surgeons of England

When contemplating the rich collection of portraits on Apothecaries and as a result it hangs now in the very the walls of this College, some ofwhich surround you as I beautiful Court Room of the Worshipful Society of speak, it is not difficult to appreciate what a splendid Apothecaries in Blackfriars Lane. The College owns a source of history they represent. Among them the copy by Henry M Allen which was given by Evelyn College is proud to be custodian of a unique group of Sprawson (Fig. 2). It is, I have no doubt, an excellent paintings which portray John Hunter, the father of likeness, showing Hunter a little untidy in appearance, surgical science, whose bicentenary we currently cele- thoughtful, but kindly. It is certainly my favourite brate. But for me, the most remarkable fact is that no one portrait of the great man and, like many of the rough has discussed this particular group in any detail since Sir drafts which the College has been fortunate to acquire Arthur Keith delivered a 'Discourse on the Portraits and over the years from the artists who have been commis- Personality of John Hunter' in February 1928 (1). Keith sioned to paint portraits, it conveys more of the sitter's was Conservator of the Hunterian Collection and a character than most. distinguished anatomist and anthropologist, but custod- I must say, however, that I do sympathise with Anne ians have problems and Keith's opening comment was: Hunter because with that straggling and wispy red hair 'In spite of every care Reynolds' portrait of Hunter is not fringing his face, John Hunter does not impress me as a lasting well'. Sadly this is still true, but let me pay tribute giant of his profession; in addition, Anne did not like his to the devoted skill and attention which Mr Scott untidy beard which had not been present when he was Moncrieff has given to it in recent years. courting her nor is it in the great Reynolds portrait. The The baseline for any discussion about the portraiture story is told,- although I can find no authority for it, that of John Hunter must be the fine picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds persuaded Hunter that since he had such an Reynolds which for so long has hung behind the interesting bone, structure underlying his face, it would President's chair in the Council Room of the College be difficult for him as a painter to do it justice without a (Fig. 1). cast being taken to assist him in the task. It was then only We know from the painter's notebooks and Hunter's a small step to persuade the sitter that it would be much own comments in his diaries that Reynolds found his more comfortable for him if he shaved off his whiskers subject a bad sitter and although the two were friends, before the wet clay became incorporated in them, and this may well have been one of the factors which this he agreed. We have here in the College the resulting mitigated against the success of the venture when the life cast of Hunter's face which tells us much, and is artist first embarked upon it. Certainly Hunter's wife especially valuable when other portraits are claimed to be Anne, did not approve of the first draft which Reynolds ofJohn Hunter (Fig. 3). Even in the photograph you can submitted and in due course she gave it away to James readily detect the tell-tale wart on the right side of his Weatherall, an upholsterer in the Haymarket. Weatherall nose, the slight deviation of the nose to the left and the was the man who managed the Hunter's property on the pattern of the lips and mouth. east side of Leicester Square in which they lived and At this point my sympathy passes from Anne Hunter entertained. At a much later date, Anne explained to to Sir Joshua Reynolds, for he had started the final Weatherall, who continued to manage the property for portrait in 1786 with four sittings and later in his diary some years after John died, that it was Reynolds' sketch records that he gave two more sittings in 1788 and yet of her husband. Fortunately, unlike Lady Churchill who another in 1789 for 'retouching' of the canvas. It is disposed of Graham Sutherland's portrait of her hus- reasonable to assume that the absence of any sittings in band, when Anne gave the portrait to Weatherall, she did 1787 were due to mutual dissatisfaction with the way the not order him to destroy it. Years later Weatherall gave it project was progressing. This is not so surprising for by to his nephew, Thomas Knight, who qualified as a doctor now Hunter was a sick man with extensive arterioscler- at Apothecaries' Hall and later joined the Livery. osis and recurrent attacks of angina. He was often in pain Fortunately, in 1857, Thomas Knight presented it to the and this began to show in his face. At this juncture let me 2 S Taylor

Figure 1. Oil on canvas by Sir Joshua Reynolds PRA, 1786.

Figure 3. Life mask in plaster, c. 1785.

picture was far advanced, Hunter fell into a train of thought, in the attitude in which he is represented in the present portrait. Reynolds without saying a word, turned the canvas upside down, made a fresh sketch, with the head between the legs of the former figure, and so proceeded to lay on over the former painting the colours of that which now graces the walls of the library at the College of Surgeons. This story has been repeated countless times and, as is so often the case, even in scientific papers, the original statement is usually found to be embroidered. Thus a leader in the Lancet in 1937 quotes how Leslie, Groves and Cronin all described 'a thick cake of paint between the legs where the head had been' (3). Indeed the saga of restoration of this canvas by Reynolds would fill a book. The fading of many of this great artist's paintings has been attributed to the pig- ments and media which he used and experimented with, but unfortunately they all too often result in areas ofwhat Figure 2. Oil on canvas by Henry M Allen, a copy of the looks like bitumen, cracked and featureless. Time has original by Reynolds now in the Society of Apothecaries, 1785. shown these materials to be unstable but, fortunately for us, in 1816, less than 30 years after Reynolds painted quote to you an old legend written by Drewry Ottley Hunter's portrait, John Jackson was commissioned by which was published in what was the first full-length life Sir Charles Bell to paint a copy which now hangs in the of Hunter (2). National Portrait Gallery. This copy shows how the Reynolds found Hunter a bad sitter and had not been able to original must have looked, with a fine purple velvet coat satisfy himself with the likeness, when one day, after the clothing a rather pale Hunter, but much of the original's John Hunter and his painters 3 details, the lettering on the spines of the books and so on, is sadly skimped. In 1817, when Reynolds' portrait was given to the College the Conservator of the National Gallery advised that 'nothing should be done'. A further copy painted in 1854 by Muller showed by comparison much fading. In 1863 Leslie wrote: 'In the careless custody of the College of Surgeons the picture appears irretrievably ruined', but then a Mr Farrer was called in and after his attention the portrait was said to look 'as fresh from the painter's easel'. One dreads to think what he must have done. Fading continued until, in 1937, Sir Alfred Webb-Johnson invited Mr W A Holder to restore Reynolds' portrait. After a great deal of painstaking work the picture appeared much as you see it today and Holder was able to report that the deterioration of the pigment had substantially come to an end and only regular cleaning should be necessary in the future. A few years ago, after taking advice, I removed the glass and I think that the picture has enjoyed the opportunity of breathing naturally. Thus it came about that in 1958 Sir Reginald Watson-Jones decided to try and settle the matter of the upside down canvas once and for all and subjected the painting to examination by X-rays. Sir Reginald de- scribed how the National Gallery: skilfully carried out the task which shows that the story told by Figure 4. Engraving by William Sharp published 1 January Drewry Ottley forty years after Hunter's death was not true, 1788. but it does reveal something much more interesting-the amazing change which Hunter's face has undergone in the intervening two or three years between Reynolds' start on the diary, a sheet of paper with notes in the handwriting of portrait and its completion. From a youthful, almost plump Sir Anthony Carlisle who, as President of the Court of middle aged individual he has shrunk to a much older man and Examiners in July 1831, had been sitting all day in the the strained appearance we now see is surely the result of the Council Room examining candidates for the Membership advanced arterial disease which was by then causing repeated of the College. His gaze had been caught, as he sat there, attacked of angina and was to lead to his death in 1793 when he by Hunter's portrait on the wall for he had been a pupil was only sixty five years old (4). of the great man, and this is what he wrote: Sir Reginald and Mr F I G Rawlins, the scientific adviser In Sir Joshua Reynolds' picture of John Hunter: he has to the National Gallery who carried out the work, were intelligibly pourtrayed his pursuits by the two exposed plates; satisfied that the final head, still seen by the naked eye, the one displays a series of forelimbs, from the simplest foot to was Reynolds' work and not the rehandling of a restorer. the human hand. In the opposite plate he ranges the human I must now return to Sir Arthur Keith's masterly skull first and descends to the quadruped with least brains. His lecture back in 1928, for there he not only dwelt on the elbow rests on a white paper showing radiating lines from a portrait of Hunter but also on the background to the large periphery and terminating under his elbow. The Mss portrait, which contains a fascinating collection of books books are Natural History of Animals and Natural History of which he and I Vegetables. In the background is the skeleton of the great giant, and specimens considered, certainly and the example of a spliced spine by an ossific prop. agree, was assembled there by Hunter himself to record his achievements in his own fields of research (1). It is, Sir Anthony Carlisle as one of John Hunter's pupils unfortunately, not possible to decipher them in any detail would have had a personal interest in the portrait of his today because of the blackening and deterioration of the old chief. Keith, whom I remember in his old age as a oil painting over the years, but we do have a splendid gaunt figure striding round the grounds at Down House engraving of the original by William Sharp, made in in a tweed Inverness overcoat, cape and deer-stalker hat 1788, little more than one year after the painting was to match, looking for all the world like Sherlock Holmes completed (Fig. 4). Sharp was almost certainly the insti- as he was portrayed in the Strand Magazine at the gator of the oil portrait by Reynolds with whom he was beginning of this century. His powers of deduction were on friendly terms and both of them knew Hunter well. no less astute. He identified the series of skulls as those of Engraving was the only method available at that time for European man, Australian aborigine, young chimpanzee, the reproduction of multiple copies of a picture and macaque monkey, dog and lastly, that of a crocodile. One Reynolds had every confidence in Sharp making a good could be forgiven for immediately jumping to the conclu- job of it. Keith records how he was led to make his own sion that Hunter had already beaten Charles Darwin to investigation by finding, filed away in William Clift's the post, but even if Hunter had already grasped the 4 S Taylor germ of the idea of the evolution of the species, he would him. Then, having used a little of the material to prepare have held back, for he had no proof of a common stock a few publications using his own name as sole author with from which these other forms could have evolved. no reference to the fact that it was based on Hunter's Perhaps the recent sensational (but incorrect) suggestion work, he burnt the remainder in 1823. Fortunately for in the press that Keith was the instigator of the Piltdown the College and posterity, Clift always seems to have had forgery of a 'missing link' stemmed from this. To return a premonition that some such catastrophe would over- to the painting, the accompanying collection of fore- take Hunter's papers and took great pains to copy those limbs, or better hands, are even more revealing for here which he considered of especial importance while they the series passes from the horse, in highest place, were still under his care. through ox, pig, dog, and monkey down to man in the Returning to Sharp's engraving of the Reynolds paint- lowest. Today few would disagree that the hand of man is ing, the other objects in the background include the feet low in the primate scale of development and the horse of Charles Byrne the Irish giant, whose skeleton is still on extremely high. It appears that Carlisle had not fathomed view in the Hunterian Museum today. Hunter was this. always interested in growth and believed that abnormali- It also appears that Carlisle had misread the title of one ties such as this giant presented might provide clues to its of the two books on the table, for although one is indeed mechanism. The jar in the painting, the only one the Natural History of Vegetables, the other is the Natural portrayed, must have contained a very special specimen, History ofFossils which dealt with a lifetime's gleanings but unfortunately it cannot now be found. According to in the field of fossil remains of animals and plants. In his Sir Anthony Carlisle, it was an 'example of a spliced museum Hunter had yet a dozen more such volumes all spine by an ossific prop'. It is almost certainly composed dealing with his deductions from the mass of material he of the vertebrae from an ox or ass with a fractured had accumulated from all over the world. Most of these spinous process repaired by a bone graft, but the notes priceless relics were burnt by his brother-in-law and relating to it must have been among those burned by Sir executor, Sir Everard Home, but miraculously Sir Everard Home in his house in Sackville Street. The Everard's son later returned the two seen in the portrait object, which resembles a modern acrylic cast made by to the College. I need to digress here to record, if only injecting the lungs, is an actual dried preparation from a briefly, the unseemly affair of Hunter's papers. patient with an osteosarcoma of the femur who had this On 14 February 1792, a young country boy from unusual distribution of secondary spread. This can still Bodmin in Cornwall, William Clift, came up to London be seen in the museum today in bottle number 2060.1. and was engaged by Hunter as amanuensis and assistant Finally, the series of radiating lines under Hunter's left in his museum. He had been recommended by a Mrs elbow records his special interest in the varying angles at Gilbert who was an old school friend of Anne, John which arteries give off their tributaries, all part of his Hunter's wife. He was an excellent artist and had very research into rheology or the study of flow in vessels. clear handwriting as the mass of his work in the College I should not let the tragedy of Everard Home's library still demonstrates. By an odd coincidence the day burning of John Hunter's papers blacken the reputation was Hunter's 64th birthday and young Clift's 17th. Clift of the whole Home family who were undoubtedly both became devoted to his master, working with him until he talented and artistic. Anne Home, whom Hunter mar- died in 1793 and continuing to work in the museum up to ried, not only provided him with a very happy family but the 1840s when its contents were transferred to the she was also a splendid hostess, very musical and a College. He was eventually the first Conservator of the competent poet. She was a particular friend of Joseph Hunterian Museum. Hunter's chief executor was Haydn during his many years in London and wrote the Everard Home who was both his brother-in-law and a librettos of his canzonettas among which was that surgeon on the staff of St George's Hospital. After he left delightful one which opens with the line: 'My mother Westminster School, Home had been apprenticed for 10 bids me bind my hair'. Her brother, Robert, was a years to Hunter, served in the Royal Navy, then as a staff considerable portrait painter, exhibiting both at the surgeon in Jamaica and finally, when Hunter's health Royal Academy in London and at the Royal Hibernian in began to fail, he returned as his assistant. In addition, Dublin. Later he was to spend much of his life in India when John Hunter died he was the chief executor. In due painting the rajahs and nawabs and many distinguished course he took over Hunter's practice and subsequently, military men who were stationed there. It is not surpris- as a successful and fashionable surgeon of the day, was ing therefore that in earlier days he should have painted made a Baronet, Serjeant Surgeon to the King and his sister's future husband, which now hangs on the walls President of this College. Sadly, he ill repaid the marvel- of the Royal Society. We have an excellent copy of it in lous start in life which his brother-in-law had given him. the College presented by Sir John Bland-Sutton when he Six years after John Hunter's death he transferred all the was President (Fig. 5). Here we have a debonair young papers and volumes which were in Hunter's old house in man with fine embroidered waistcoat tightly buttoned, Castle Street to his own home, and despite repeated white stockings, a black three-cornered hat covering his requests and entreaties from the Trustees of the red hair and a huge dog happily resting its head on his Hunterian Collection, he neither prepared the promised master's knee. The background of a woody glade sug- catalogue of the specimens in the museum nor delivered gests the countryman. up the notes which would have allowed Clift to do it for Robert was again to paint his brother-in-law after his John Hunter and his painters 5

Figure 5. Oil on canvas by Dorofield Hardy, a copy of the original by Robert Home now in the Royal Society, c. 1770. Figure 6. Oil on canvas by Robert Home, c. 1775-1778. marriage and the portrait was given to the College by Hunter's great-great-nephew, William Hunter Baillie in 1895 (Fig. 6). It faces the visitor at the top of the stairs before entering the Hunterian Museum and since it was ~, cleaned a few years ago has become a great favourite. l_ . .ll_ Hunter is shown seated at a table writing in one of his notebooks. Appropriately, he is wearing a brown overall ~. over his red waistcoat with white cravat and white ~~. stockings. Note that his hair is still red but now rathert tawny. He does not look a very fit man now, indeed his, face is rather podgy and he has certainly put on weight. We are fortunate in owning these two portraits by Robert 7 Home, who as a brother-in-law, has painted them with a critical yet sympathetic eye. There are only two other likenesses of John Hunter of which we can be certain that they were created in his lifetime. The first is the pencil sketch attributed to Sir Nathaniel Dance Holland, who was both Baronet and Royal Academician, and took the name Holland in middle age (Fig. 7). The high collar adds a certain raffish look and Hunter appears old. The portrait is inscribed: John Hunter Esqr. and on the back: 'Drawn by Sir Nathaniel Holland 1793-late Dance'. It was given to the College by Hunter's nephew-in-law Capt Sir Everard Home RN in July 1849. It is a very sensitive sketch, made within months of his death and probably still in his possession at that time; a farewell portrait. The other likeness which was produced in 1791 is a wax medallion later done in porcelain by John Tassie (Fig. 8). Figure 7. Pencil on paper by Sir Nathaniel Dance Holland Bt John Tassie, who was born in 1735, was a stonemason RA,, 1793. 6 S Taylor

Figure 9. Oil on canvas, unsigned, c. 1765-1785.

himself that it appeared to belong to the latter part of the eighteenth century he made a number of trips back and Figure 8. Wax medallion by James Tassie, 1791. forth between Christie's and the College where he com- pared it with the life mask of John Hunter. In a letter to with an inventive turn of mind. He took up modelling; the British Medical Journal (5) he wrote: perhaps he was attracted by the speed of creating a To my mind the picture agreed with the mask in every likeness by such a method compared with chipping away particular. The wart, the shape of the nose, the skull, were all at stone, and with his partner Quin he invented a white in the painting, and the colour of the eyes, grey-blue, and the enamel composition used for his medallion portraits. slight squint all agreed with what I had read of Hunter's face. These were soon in great demand and certainly his The painting was entirely in the manner of Gainsborough, the coat was in and colour what I knew Gainsborough likeness ofJohn Hunter is very attractive. Whether it was style exactly was fond of, and so I bought the picture.' done from life or from a study of existing portraits is not known, but it has always been praised by the critics. In With his typical generosity he presented it to the College. the Hunterian Museum we have both the original wax Buckston Browne went on to relate how during and one with modifications. Our own workshops struck a Gainsborough's fatal illness he was closely attended by number of copies which were distributed at the time of John Hunter and since it was known that the great artist the Hunterian celebrations in 1978 on the occasion of the went on painting to the very end of his life, how likely it 250th anniversary of his birth. would have been for him to ask his wonderful surgeon to Now I wish to turn to what is still a subject of much give him a sitting. debate, the painting which has been dubbed the The Director of the National Gallery in 1928 was Buckston Browne portrait of Hunter (Fig. 9). The story James Milner and he rejected it as a genuine starts with the sale at Christie's on 1 December 1922, of a Gainsborough as does the present occupier of that post, group of 157 paintings, the property of L M McCormick John Hayes, who is also one of the Hunterian Trustees Esq, of 11 Hertford Street, Mayfair. Many had great and a world authority on Gainsborough. It is clearly by names attached to them but the auctioneer pointed out at an artist of standing, and study of the paintwork, canvas the sale that there was no guarantee implied by this. The and clothes put it between 1765 and 1785. It is not painting in question was Lot no. 131 'Dr Hunter by mentioned in either Gainsborough's or Reynolds' note- Gainsborough' and it caught the eye of Mr Buckston books. For some years the painting has held pride of Browne that great benefactor of this College and a place in the President's Lodge and a number of expert distinguished urologist. Buckston Browne had been a opinions have been sought. The left side of the canvas is a keen collector of paintings all his life and having satisfied splendid piece of work, the face is most sensitively dealt J7ohn Hunter and his painters 7 with and Sir Arthur Keith pointed out that the artist had represented. The quantity of paintings, engravings and faithfully represented the skull of a macaque monkey in objets d'art is so great that even under the hammer of the the sitter's left hand but had for some strange reason original Mr Christie himself, the sale occupied three given a human outline to the nasal bones. Except for this whole days from Wednesday to Friday at his 'Great quirk it might be the skull seen in Reynolds' portrait in Room' in Pall Mall and was followed by an auction on the open folio by his elbow. When, however, one turns to Saturday of that wonderful library of precious books the right half of the canvas something drastic has including, for example, a complete set of the Royal happened. The left side of the sitter's coat is entirely Society's Philosophical Transactions, Captain Cook's three asymmetrical and very dark, the left shoulder has voyages and William Hodges' Travels in India. What dropped and the fluted pillar has a ghost-like shadow bargains they were when we look at the clerk's ledger, all crossing its lower part. The canvas has been relined, priced in guineas as indeed they still were until very probably in the nineteenth century. Perhaps some tra- recently. gedy happened then, for the process of relining requires It certainly appears to me as though John Hunter lived attaching the painting to fresh canvas by heating it with at the very hub of the art world in London in the beeswax as the fixative. eighteenth century. Joshua Reynolds was a friend as well A few months ago I had this painting radiographed and as his portraitist; Gainsborough a patient, and Hunter's surprisingly found it underlaid by another and singularly wife Anne was writing the libretti for Joseph Haydn who distinctive portrait which no one so far has identified was at that time living in London. (Fig. 10). It looks like the portrait of someone we ought If after this lecture you should go upstairs and Jook to be able to identify. Meanwhile I personally prefer to round the magnificent Hunterian Museum you can still attribute the original work to Zoffany, with whom we take a peep into that part of Hunter's collection that was know that Hunter was acquainted, but for the present not sold at Christie's but was left hanging on the walls of the problem remains unresolved. his museum situated in what was then open country at Marble Arch. Here you will find many portraits by such artists as William Hodges who accompanied Captain Cook on his second circumnavigation, George Stubbs the Let me now turn to the role of John Hunter as a greatest of all animal artists, Philip Reinagle and Laurent collector of pictures and a patron of the arts. We have Agasse, all of their work having particular relevance to light thrown on this by the sale of his paintings at the theme which inspired his whole great biological Christie's auction rooms in January 1794. The catalogue collection. This was to show the pattern of the workings is extraordinarily broad in its extent, and Hunter was of the main systems in nature such as the circulation, certainly catholic in his taste ifwe look at the list ofartists respiration, alimentation and reproduction through their comparative anatomy and physiology in all the living creatures that he could lay his hands on. Most visitors head straight for the central screen on which hang Stubbs' wonderful painting of a rhinoceros or the nearby light-hearted portrait of a yak. On the reverse of this screen are displayed three paintings of North American Indians, the outer ones by William Hodges flanking the unique acquisition of John Hunter which was recorded in Clift's cataloguing as an American Indian and family. This'we now know was painted by Benjamin West, presumably from memory when he first went to Rome from his native Philadelphia. West event- ually settled in London and became President of the Royal Academy in 1792 only months before John Hunter died. What a wonderful eye for a picture Hunter must have had; if he had been buying art as an investment the value of his possessions would today be astronomical. It is not easy to divine the master plan which motivated John Hunter as he made this collection from every corner of the globe. It was with him an obsession and perhaps he was seeking answers to those fundamental problems of evolution which Charles Darwin was to address in the next century. We can only be grateful to him for the collections which are housed under this roof. Behind his somewhat rugged exterior, John Hunter was a very sensitive person and when he married Anne Home he was marrying the sister of a leading portraitist who was to Figure 10. Radiograph showing underpainting. flourish later in India in the eighteenth century, the great 8 S Taylor days of the Raj. I hope that in this bicentennial year I 2 Ottley D. The Life ofJfohn Hunter FRS. London: Longman, have succeeded in presenting you with a picture of 1835. Hunter as a man both through the eyes of his contempor- 3 Leading Article. Lancet 6 November 1937. aries and through his own involvement in the art world of 4 Watson-Jones R. Surgery is destined to the Practice ofMedicine his day. (Hunterian Oration, 1959). Edinburgh: Livingstone, 1961. S Buckston Browne G. The New Portrait of John Hunter. References Br Med J 1928; 1: 325. 1 Keith A. A Discourse on the Portraits and Personality of John Hunter. Br Med J 1928; i: 205-9.