Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Portraits of William Hunter by Reynolds, Chamberlin, and Ramsay

Stephen Martin
Thailand

The Hunterian in Glasgow University and The Royal Academy, London, have three portraits of the anatomist Dr William Hunter.1,2 They make a particularly interesting group with personalized, cryptic symbols and plain emblems of anatomy and the Enlightenment. Despite some discussion,3 their specific icons have never been analyzed.

Portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds

Fig. 1. William Hunter (1718–1783) by Sir Joshua Reynolds, finished 1787. Oil on canvas. © The Hunterian, with kind permission.

Reynolds (1723–1792) finished painting William Hunter4 in 1787, four years after Hunter’s death aged 64. (Fig. 1) A preserved fetus, lying on the left side with the head towards the left of the picture, is shown through a dissected anterior window in a womb, with what appears to be a ring of cervical cancer with lumps of tissue attached to it in the foreground. It is much rougher and more pronounced than the normal soft tissue of pregnancy or preservation. If so, it represents a double tragedy, and a powerful driving force for knowledge to progress medicine. The pathos is exaggerated because the baby looks normal. Cancer of the cervix was described as womb cancer by Hippocrates and more commonly recognized from the 1400s onwards.5 It is not a modern condition, and this reflects the minimum historical age of the causative human papillomavirus.

The second specimen seems more of a curiosity than a tragedy in symbolism. It appears to be a huge teratoma tumor, with bone, cartilage, and chaotic muscle attachments. These are benign tumors, but they can grow very large and contain many different tissues including hair and teeth. There seem to be too many cut muscle sections and unexpected lumps for this to be a normal giant mammalian hip joint, such as an elephant. Hunter preserved such specimens in alcohol,6 which he referred to as “spirit.”7

Hunter’s silver and glass ink stand is of very high quality. The ball-edge pattern is termed gadrooned. Three inkwell slots have cut, interlocking “V” shapes called open fretwork, meaning pierced right through. It has two pen wells and four diagonal corner lions’ feet. Ones of this quality were solid silver and valuable today as being George II rather than later. Several almost identical pieces have sold at auction in recent years. They were all made by the London silversmiths Samuel Herbert and Company as hallmarked solid silver in the 1750s. No other makes look quite like them. This suggests, if bought new, that Hunter acquired it as a prized item in his thirties, the earliest phase of his career success. By then, Herbert had worked as a master silversmith hallmarking large pieces for about ten years. Interestingly, the triple ink stands were 24 cm long. That means the fetus was about 12 cm and, sadly, at 16 or 17 weeks of gestation, again implying that this was not a miscarriage but tumor.

Hunter has two white quill pens, one in the well and one in his hand, as a realistic emblem of energy and preparedness, along with paper. There are six books on heavy shelves as strong foundation supports for the knowledge therein, behind a protective curtain. They represent breadth of knowledge, with no clear writing or meaningful titles magnified at high resolution. There is also no discernible writing on the documents under Hunter’s right hand.

A hand-woven wool carpet on top of a circular table has a red background with grey and blue swirl patterns, looking like a Caucasus rug, bending smoothly but stiffly over the table edge, suggesting durable, long-term use in that shape. Hunter wears a black long coat and waistcoat, with a plain tie but lace cuffs. His 1750s wig is well out of fashion. By the time of the painting, new wigs had single curls, or real hair was done like a wig in a ponytail, sometimes even powdered.

William Hunter was the first professor of anatomy at the Royal Academy from 1769–1772. He worked closely with Reynolds, teaching student painters about the human body.8 Reynolds was also on the board of St. Georges Hospital with Willam’s younger brother, John Hunter. When Reynolds painted John, he appears to have been more assiduous. Dissatisfied with the initial face, he turned it upside down and promptly repainted John’s face between the legs.9

Fig. 2. Portrait of Dr William Hunter by Mason Chamberlin, RA, 1769. Oil on canvas. Royal Academy of Arts. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.

Portrait by Mason Chamberlin

Chamberlin’s 1769 portrait of Hunter10 is altogether more restrained, with Hunter holding a bronze anatomical model showing the muscles of a complete male figure, posed in elegant movement. (Fig. 2) Though classical in style, it is not Roman and shows a dissection. It is an écorché, meaning flayed figure, produced since the earliest Renaissance image examples of Leonardo da Vinci and Andreas Vesalius. Leaning to the right with the right arm elevated and the left foot raised on a ball, it resembles one in the Science Museum.11 These are both copies of the sculpture done two years earlier, in 1767, by Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741–1728). Houdon studied anatomy in Rome as an artist in the early 1760s and later sculpted Benjamin Franklin and George Washington.12

Chamberlin (1727–1787) had an unusual career path into being a portrait artist. He started as an indentured apprentice accountant in the counting house of a businessman in the Company of Salters.13 He studied under Francis Hayman alongside two other great future portrait masters Lemuel Francis Abbott and Nathaniel Dance. Some of the Salters may have traded art materials, but Chamberlin’s biographical detail is scant and it is only speculation that this influenced his career path. There is nothing scant about the quality of his best portraits, even though he drew criticism in a poem from rivals in the cutthroat competition of portrait work for painting flat figures looking like board.14 His best works dispel this criticism, being master portraits in a distinctive, warm, and detailed style. They are repeatedly realistic and do not distort in order to flatter. There is even a touch of romanticism in his most outstanding portraits, making his subjects convincingly more attractive. Chamberlin was a founder member of the Royal Academy and, once again in the innermost circle of the Enlightenment, he too painted a well-known portrait of Benjamin Franklin.15 Hunter’s right arm is outstretched, as if keenly expounding a lecture. His tie, wig and cuffs look the same as in the Reynold’s, but he has a plain red coat and waistcoat.

Joseph Collyer, who worked for the Royal Family, engraved a copper plate print of the center of Chamberlin’s portrait as an oval highlight,16 published in 1783.17  The details of both are very similar, in particular Hunter’s obvious smile of reason. The fashionable oval was designed to be framed by doctors and scientists as an homage.Interestingly, William Hogarth produced paintings to sell prints because expensive oils were not good business.18

Portrait by Allan Ramsay

Fig 3. Portrait of William Hunter by Allan Ramsay, 1764–65. Oil on canvas. © The Hunterian, with kind permission.

A fellow Scot, Allan Ramsay (1713–1784), painted Hunter in his mid-forties,19 around 1764-65, in the early years of Ramsay settling in London as painter to King George III.20 (Fig. 3) Hunter has a glowing light on his face, mirrored on the document in his hand, making a clear and strong symbol of Enlightenment. It is the most handsome-looking portrait of Hunter, from three years before he built his anatomy theatre and museum in Soho. Hunter was already well-established as an anatomist and obstetrician. His left index finger is raised as another gesture of imparting knowledge. Ramsay had a gift for drawing observers into animated realism in virtually-photographic portraits. He planned carefully with preliminary drawings.

Despite plain surroundings, Hunter’s gold buttonhole braid and golden coat back strips are quite fancy, almost princely, being nothing Protestant, but more about medical status. Hunter also has extravagant lace cuffs and a lacey full-length shirt front and collar lace, while most scientists toned down their dress. It is expensive lace. The wig is quite long and again outmoded with about six side curls, having been in fashion in the 1740s. Although it would have been lighter and cooler, Hunter avoided wigs sported by young doctors and scientists in the 1760s. There may have been a Calvinist, Puritan element to his wig choice, but it does not fit the rest of the flamboyant clothes. Maybe, like other images of doctors at the time, they used wig maturity, not fashion to imply experience, marketing themselves in the stiff competition of independent practice. Also, you cannot fault Hunter’s self-esteem for acting the part of a successful, yet conservative doctor in his mid-forties.

Ramsay immersed himself in classicism for his Enlightenment education with nearly five years in Italy. His second grand tour lasted three years and he studied with his wife Margaret.21 He made friends in Rome with the outstanding architect Robert Adam and the provocative genius Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Samuel Johnson said of Ramsay: “You will not find a man in whose conversation there is more instruction, more information, and more elegance,” to which James Boswell replied, “What I admire in Ramsay is his continuing to be so young.”22 With added restraint, that also sums up his painting.

Ramsay took more care and sensitivity over portraits of professionals than the aristocracy.23 Whenever portrait composition is symbolic, there must have been a collaboration between the artist and the sitter. Anatomical art history around Hunter says a lot about context,24 but we can now only gain tantalizing glimpses of the planning that went into his portraits with visual detective work.

End notes

  1. B. Herold Griffith. Two great Scots: John and William Hunter. Excerpted from a presentation at the meeting of the Society of Medical History of Chicago, October 3, 2006. Hektoen International Journal. Highlighted in memory of Dr. Griffith, Fall 2022: https://hekint.org/2020/06/11/two-great-scots-john-and-william-hunter/
  2. Julius Bonello, Kathy Slater. Grave robber or father of experimental surgery: A look into the life of John Hunter. Hektoen International Journal. Winter 2024.
    https://hekint.org/2024/04/22/grave-robber-or-father-of-experimental-surgery-a-look-intothe-life-of-john-hunter/
  3. Arden Hegele. Skeletons and injections. William Hunter’s lectures on anatomy and aesthetics. Uni Glasgow online. https://universityofglasgowlibrary.wordpress.com/2015/08/05/skeletons-andinjectionswilliam-hunters-lectures-on-anatomy-and-aesthetics/ This explores Hunter’s fondness for aesthetics in anatomy.
  4. Portrait of William Hunter. Sir Joshua Reynolds. Oil on canvas. The Hunterian, Glasgow. 125 x 100 cm. GLAHA 43793. Acc no RCSSC/P 137A. Presented by Nigel Stuart Hunter, 1946.
  5. Othman Nor Hayati. Cancer of the Cervix – From Bleak Past to Bright Future; a Review, with an Emphasis on Cancer of the Cervix in Malaysia. Malays J Med Sci. 2003 Jan; 10(1): 13–26.
  6. Robert Maclean. Skeletons and Injections: William Hunter’s Lectures on Anatomy and Aesthetics. University of Glasgow Library Blog. August, 2015. https://universityofglasgowlibrary.wordpress.com/2015/08/05/skeletons-and-injectionswilliam-hunters-lectures-on-anatomy-and-aesthetics/
  7. William Hunter. Anatomical Lectures. MS Gen. Vol 3, pp. 769-772.
  8. Lovasik BP. The Picture of Scientific Surgery: John Hunter and the Reynolds Portrait. The American Surgeon. 2024; 90(6): 1818-1821.
  9. George C Peachey. A Memoir of William and John Hunter. William Brendon and son, Mayflower Press, Plymouth, 1924.
  10. Portrait of Dr William Hunter, 1769. Mason Chamberlin RA (1727 – 1787). Oil on canvas, H 127 cm x W 101.6 cm. Royal Academy of Arts. Obj no 03/712. Given by Mason Chamberlin 1780-81. https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/work-of-art/portrait-of-dr-william-hunter-1
  11. Wilkins, G (Photo credit). Bronze anatomical figure of male. Early 18th century. Science Museum, London. https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co76265/bronze-anatomical-figure-of-male
  12. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. Houdon, Jean Antoine. In: Encyclopædia Britannica. 11th ed, Cambridge University Press, 1911.
  13. Ellis Waterhouse, ed. Chamberlin, Mason in The Dictionary of British Eighteenth Century Painters in Oils and Crayons. The Antique Collectors’ Club, Woodbridge, 1981.
  14. West, Shearer. Chamberlin, Mason. In The Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Turner. Grove OUP, Oxford, 1996. Vol 6, p 409.
  15. West, op cit.
  16. Collyer, Joseph, after Mason Chamberlin. Portrait of Dr. William Hunter. April 28, 1783. Royal Academy of Arts. https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/work-of-art/portrait-of-dr-william-hunter
  17. His most famous engraved publication was an 1808 handsome and powerful allegory of the abolition of slavery. https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-254736
  18. George Vertue, ed Horace Walpole. Vertue’s note book. A. f. British Museum, Add. MS. 23,076. The Volume of the Walpole Society, Vol. 22, Vertue note books: Vol 3, 19331934.
  19. Portrait of William Hunter. Allan Ramsay, 1764-65. Oil on canvas. The Hunterian, Glasgow. H 96 x W 75 cm. GLAHA 44026, bequeathed by Dr William Hunter, 1783.
  20. Smart, Alastair. Ramsay, Allan. In The Dictionary of Art,ed. Jane Turner. Grove, OUP, Oxford, 1996. Vol 25, pp. 881-884.
  21. Smart, op cit.
  22. James Boswell. The Life of Samuel Johnson. Ed. Croker. John Murray, London, 1860. Chapter LXII “1778”, p. 610.
  23. Smart, op cit.
  24. Alicia Hughes. William Hunter (1718–1783) and his anatomical artists. The British Art Journal, Vol. 23, No. 3 (Winter 2022/23), pp. 43-57.

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to Dr. Giovanna Vitelli, Mr. Graham Nisbet and Mr. Malcolm Chapman of The Hunterian, University of Glasgow, to Jim Bickel for his expert tuition about antique rugs, and to Ms. Johanna Sares and Ms. Flora Sharp of Bonhams for their kind assistance.

The author would like to dedicate this article to the late Dr. Andrew Rainey, distinguished both as a pathologist and an expert collector of Georgian silver. Influential conversations about antique silver and paintings, as students, over pints of Federation Special after Newcastle Med Soc meetings, are fondly remembered.


STEPHEN MARTIN was a professor and clinical psychiatrist who directed studies in functional neuroanatomy. He trained in history with Norman McCord and has held an arts professorship and Fellowship of the Royal Asiatic Society for his research on eighteenth-century portraits. He now helps to run a museum of historic art in Northeast Thailand, aimed at teaching underprivileged children.

Winter 2025

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