This fascinating portrait of a young anatomist, painted in the late 18th century is the work of the Anglo-American portrait painter Mather Brown.His 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 and must emphasize as well the particular direction our sitter would be likely to take.
Mather Brown was an American, who came early in his life to London.He was helped at the outset by those two much more established American artists in the capital, Benjamin West and Gilbert Stuart.Both they initially and indeed Mather Brown himself in the 1780's and 90's made something of a point of painting American sitters as they passed through London. These would either be those 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.In the former category were either refugees, who were destined to remain in England or indeed a number of prominent citizens who, having backed the Crown in the recent conflict, had come to London seeking compensation for their loyalty.In the latter category were to be found passing through the capital such luminaries as John Adams, the 2nd President of the United States and Thomas Jefferson who would follow him as the 3rd President, both of whom were painted in London by Mather Brown. His portrait of Thomas Jefferson of 1786 (National Portrait Gallery Smithsonian Institution) in fact bears particularly close comparison with this present work. Brown’s Colonel William Smith also of 1786 (Adams National Historical Park) and his Sir Richard Arkwright of 1790 (New Britain Museum of American Art) are also strikingly similar in their treatment of the sitters.Brown became an artist of considerable note in the 1780s and 1790s.His work was greatly in demand and he was appointed history and portrait painter to no less a figure than the Duke of York.The quality of his work in those early years was of a very high order.In later years though, perhaps on account of his desire to be known as a history painter he fell out of favour with the public and by the end of his life, presumably on account of a much more precarious financial situation, the quality of his work had suffered considerably.But his best works – and these are almost exclusively his earlier portraits – remain fine things and show him to have been a portrait painter of very considerable ability.
The identification of the sitter in this intriguing portrait is difficult.What we can say at the outset that he is obviously a medical man, and one with a particular interest in anatomy.Not only do we have the drawings or prints of anatomical study to look at on his table, but also the foetus – a double headed foetus if one looks closely - in the jar.However, there is something just a little unusual in his dress for an English sitter of the day.His cravat is a little more severe, the cut of his clothes a little more angular.In all his costume appears just slightly more plausible for an American sitter than an English one.So it is likely that we are looking at a young American medic passing through London. This is not an unlikely scenario at all.One of the most famous medical schools in the world at that date was that in Edinburgh and a number of 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 the early 20th century there are too many discrepancies for this present portrait to depict him. However, he did have a close friend, a man called Caspar Wistar, who like Spooner himself, graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1786. Wistar toured Europe briefly after his graduation, but was back in the US by 1787, so if painted by Brown it would have been in 1786. This date is entirely consistent with Mather Brown's style between 1785 and 1790, as discussed above. Quite probable also is that a newly qualified medical man would get his portrait painted in his professional attire (slightly old-fashioned tie-wig and predominantly dark clothing) shortly after graduation. Further 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.. And if his fellow American, William Spooner, had chosen the ex-pat American Mather Brown as his own portrait painter then that might easily be the connection in turn 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.All images of Wistar known today stem from a painting of him much later in life.This is a portrait of 1817 by one Bass Otis, a slightly primitive American painter. Here Wistar is considerably older than he would have been in the Mather Brown days, the wig has naturally disappeared and the dress is different.But even across those years, one can say that the faces are not at all dissimilar.
Further researches may reveal the exact identity of the sitter, but for now we will have to content ourselves with the fact that we are looking at a young American medical man, painted in London at the outset of his career by the émigré American artist Mather Brown around the years 1785 to 1790.With the stated interest in anatomy – particularly human specimens – Caspar Wistar (1761-1818) is a very likely candidate.