ATTRIBUTED TO MATHER BROWN (AMERICAN 1761-1831)
PORTRAIT OF A GENTLEMAN, POSSIBILY CASPAR WISTAR
Oil on canvas
89.5 x 69.5cm (35 x 27¼ in.)
This fascinating portrait of a young anatomist, painted in the late 18th century is characteristic of the work by Anglo-American portrait painter Mather Brown The portrait shows a medical man at the beginning of his career, and of particular interest is the specimen jar at his elbow. In this jar can be seen preserved a human foetus. On even closer inspection this can be seen to be a two-headed example. The inclusion of such an object in a portrait underlines the curiosity that such phenomena aroused in the medical world at that time.
Mather Brown was born in America but moved to London before he was 20. At the start of his career, he was helped by two established American artists working in London: Benjamin West and Gilbert Stuart All three artists made something of a point of painting American sitters as they passed through London, both Americans who had remained loyal to the Crown through the War of Independence or those who were now the new political representatives of the emerging American nation.
Brown's sitters included such luminaries as John Adams the 2nd President of the United States and Thomas Jefferson who would follow him as the 3rd President. Brown's 1786 portrait of Thomas Jefferson (National Portrait Gallery Smithsonian Institution) in fact bears particularly close comparison with this present work. Colonel William Smith of the same date (Adams National Historical Park) and Sir Richard Arkwright painted in 1790 (New Britain Museum of American Art) are also strikingly similar in their treatment of each sitter.
Brown worked from around 1781 for some 50 years until his death in 1831, but it is his early work that is now regarded as his finest. His portraits from the late 1780s and early 1790s rank with the best of their day and tellingly it was then that he was appointed 'History and Portrait Painter' to the Duke of York.
The identification of the sitter in this intriguing portrait is difficult. He is obviously a medical man, and one with a particular interest in anatomy. He wears unusual dress for an English sitter of the day. His cravat is a little more severe, and the cut of his clothes a little more angular. In all his costume appears plausibly American.
It is possible then, that we are looking at a young American medic passing through London. One of the most famous medical schools in the world at that date was that in Edinburgh and several foreign students, Americans among them, were drawn to further their studies in the Scottish capital. The only appropriately aged medical man, known to have sat for Mather Brown in the late 1780s is one William Spooner who's portrait is currently untraced. But reading descriptions of the picture from early 20th century records, there are too many discrepancies for this present portrait to depict him. However, he did have a close friend, a man called Caspar Wistar (1761 - 1818), who like Spooner himself, graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1786. Wistar toured Europe briefly after his graduation, returning to America by 1787. We can conclude then that if we are looking at Caspar Wistar painted by Brown in London, it would most likely have been done in 1786. That date is totally consistent stylistically with other works by Brown from that date.
It is quite probable that a newly qualified medical man would get his portrait painted in his professional attire, as is depicted here, shortly after graduation. Furthermore, Caspar Wistar is known to have been particularly keen on 'specimens' and his collection of these still exists today in the institute named after him - the Wistar Institute at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. We know that Wistar's friend William Spooner had chosen the ex-pat American Mather Brown as his own portrait painter, therefore it is not such a leap to suggest that this might in turn be the connection between Wistar and Brown.
Caspar Wistar became a highly celebrated American physician. He was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American College of Physicians. He published his famous System of Anatomy in 1811, and alongside that had developed a system of preserving human remains by injecting them with wax. He was an early pioneer of vaccination, a prominent abolitionist, a friend, despite their difference in years, of Thomas Jefferson and is also remembered today by having had the plant Wisteria named after him.
Only one confirmed image of Wistar is known today, a portrait painted the year before he died, by Bass Otis in 1817. Here Wistar is considerably older than he would have been in 1786 but when comparing the two faces, they are not at all dissimilar. A copy painted in 1830 by Thomas Sully of this later portrait can be found in the collection of the American Philosophical Society Library (No 58.P.26).
ATTRIBUTED TO MATHER BROWN (AMERICAN 1761-1831)
PORTRAIT OF A GENTLEMAN, POSSIBILY CASPAR WISTAR
Oil on canvas
89.5 x 69.5cm (35 x 27¼ in.)
This fascinating portrait of a young anatomist, painted in the late 18th century is characteristic of the work by Anglo-American portrait painter Mather Brown The portrait shows a medical man at the beginning of his career, and of particular interest is the specimen jar at his elbow. In this jar can be seen preserved a human foetus. On even closer inspection this can be seen to be a two-headed example. The inclusion of such an object in a portrait underlines the curiosity that such phenomena aroused in the medical world at that time.
Mather Brown was born in America but moved to London before he was 20. At the start of his career, he was helped by two established American artists working in London: Benjamin West and Gilbert Stuart All three artists made something of a point of painting American sitters as they passed through London, both Americans who had remained loyal to the Crown through the War of Independence or those who were now the new political representatives of the emerging American nation.
Brown's sitters included such luminaries as John Adams the 2nd President of the United States and Thomas Jefferson who would follow him as the 3rd President. Brown's 1786 portrait of Thomas Jefferson (National Portrait Gallery Smithsonian Institution) in fact bears particularly close comparison with this present work. Colonel William Smith of the same date (Adams National Historical Park) and Sir Richard Arkwright painted in 1790 (New Britain Museum of American Art) are also strikingly similar in their treatment of each sitter.
Brown worked from around 1781 for some 50 years until his death in 1831, but it is his early work that is now regarded as his finest. His portraits from the late 1780s and early 1790s rank with the best of their day and tellingly it was then that he was appointed 'History and Portrait Painter' to the Duke of York.
The identification of the sitter in this intriguing portrait is difficult. He is obviously a medical man, and one with a particular interest in anatomy. He wears unusual dress for an English sitter of the day. His cravat is a little more severe, and the cut of his clothes a little more angular. In all his costume appears plausibly American.
It is possible then, that we are looking at a young American medic passing through London. One of the most famous medical schools in the world at that date was that in Edinburgh and several foreign students, Americans among them, were drawn to further their studies in the Scottish capital. The only appropriately aged medical man, known to have sat for Mather Brown in the late 1780s is one William Spooner who's portrait is currently untraced. But reading descriptions of the picture from early 20th century records, there are too many discrepancies for this present portrait to depict him. However, he did have a close friend, a man called Caspar Wistar (1761 - 1818), who like Spooner himself, graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1786. Wistar toured Europe briefly after his graduation, returning to America by 1787. We can conclude then that if we are looking at Caspar Wistar painted by Brown in London, it would most likely have been done in 1786. That date is totally consistent stylistically with other works by Brown from that date.
It is quite probable that a newly qualified medical man would get his portrait painted in his professional attire, as is depicted here, shortly after graduation. Furthermore, Caspar Wistar is known to have been particularly keen on 'specimens' and his collection of these still exists today in the institute named after him - the Wistar Institute at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. We know that Wistar's friend William Spooner had chosen the ex-pat American Mather Brown as his own portrait painter, therefore it is not such a leap to suggest that this might in turn be the connection between Wistar and Brown.
Caspar Wistar became a highly celebrated American physician. He was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American College of Physicians. He published his famous System of Anatomy in 1811, and alongside that had developed a system of preserving human remains by injecting them with wax. He was an early pioneer of vaccination, a prominent abolitionist, a friend, despite their difference in years, of Thomas Jefferson and is also remembered today by having had the plant Wisteria named after him.
Only one confirmed image of Wistar is known today, a portrait painted the year before he died, by Bass Otis in 1817. Here Wistar is considerably older than he would have been in 1786 but when comparing the two faces, they are not at all dissimilar. A copy painted in 1830 by Thomas Sully of this later portrait can be found in the collection of the American Philosophical Society Library (No 58.P.26).
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