Portraits,People and Things: Richard Mead and Medical Identity

A complete list of Roy Porter's publications has been compiled: www.ucl.ac.uk\histmed\memorial.

Bynum W. F. Porter R. (eds), William Hunter and the eighteenth-century medical world (Cambridge, 1985). On William Hunter see also Brock H. , Dr. William Hunter's papers and drawings in the Hunterian collection of Glasgow University Library: A handlist (Cambridge, 1990), and idem, “The many facets of Dr. William Hunter”, History of science, xxxii (1994), 387–408.

Jordanova L. , “Gender, generation and science: William Hunter's obstetrical atlas”, in Bynum Porter , op. cit. (ref. 2), 385–411, and in a revised version in Jordanova L. , Nature displayed: Gender, science and medicine 1760–1820 (London and New York, 1999), 183–202.

Kemp M. , Dr. William Hunter at the Royal Academy of Arts (Glasgow, 1975); idem, “Dr William Hunter on the Windsor Leonardos and his volume of drawings attributed to Pietro da Cortona”, Burlington magazine, cxviii (1976), 114–18; Bynum W. Porter R. (eds), Medicine and the five senses (Cambridge and New York, 1993); Newman K. , Fetal positions: Individualism, science, visuality (Stanford, 1996); and Wallace M. Kemp M. , Spectacular bodies: The art and science of the human body from Leonardo to now (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 2000), esp. pp. 44–50.

On Mead, in addition to the Dictionary of national biography and works cited elsewhere, see Meade R. , In the sunshine of life: A biography of Dr. Richard Mead 1673–1754 (Philadelphia, 1974), esp. chap. 4 on his collections; Whitley W. T. , Artists and their friends in England 1700–1799 (London and Boston, 1928), i, 28–29, 57, 87, 127; Munck W. , The roll of the Royal College of Physicians of London (London, 1861), i, 36–43; Maty M. , Authentic memoirs of the life of Richard Mead M.D. (London, 1755); Jordanova L. , “Richard Mead's communities of belief in eighteenth-century London”, in Ditchfield S. (ed.), Christianity and community in the West (Aldershot, 2001), 241–59; Hanson C. , “Dr. Richard Mead and Watteau's ‘Comédiens italiens’”, The Burlington magazine, cxlv (2003), 265–72; and Jenkins I. , “Dr. Richard Mead (1673–1754) and his circle”, paper given to a conference on the history of the British Museum, and forthcoming in Anderson R. Caygill M. Macgregor A. Syson L. (eds), Enlightening the British: Knowledge, discovery and the museum in the eighteenth century (London, 2003) — My thanks for a pre-publication copy. Brown T. , “The changing self-concept of the eighteenth-century London physician”, Eighteenth-century life, vii (1982), 31–40, discusses Mead in relation to medical identity, taking a different approach to the one adopted here, and stressing profound changes between the early and late eighteenth centuries.

I am thinking of the fact that Hunter bought portraits of Charleton, Newton, Harvey, and Radcliffe, at Mead's sale (my thanks to staff at the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, University of Glasgow, for giving me the list) and their shared friendship with Allan Ramsay, who painted portraits of both of them.

Jordanova L. , “Medical men: 1780–1820”, in Woodall J. (ed.), Portraiture: Facing the subject (Manchester, 1997), 101–15; idem, Defining features: Scientific and medical portraits 1660–2000 (London, 2000); and idem, “Presidential address: Remembrance of science past”, The British journal for the history of science, xxxiii (2000), 387–406.

Lawrence C. Shapin S. (eds), Science incarnate: Historical embodiments of natural knowledge (Chicago and London, 1998), is an important collection addressing such issues.

On portraiture in general see Pointon M. , Hanging the head: Portraiture and social formation in eighteenth-century England (New Haven and London, 1993); Brilliant R. , Portraiture (London, 1991); and Woodall , Portraiture (ref. 7).

The early eighteenth-century Medina portraits for the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh are a good example, Masson A. , Portraits, paintings and busts in the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 1995), esp. pp. 128–9, 229.

The National Portrait Gallery in London has changed its displays many times since its foundation well over one hundred years ago, but the current hang continues to group achievers in the same or similar fields together. See Sofer M. , “Men of science, medicine and technology in eighteenth-century portraiture”, Ph.D. thesis, University of East Anglia, 2003.

Baker M. , Figured in marble: The making and viewing of eighteenth-century sculpture (London and Los Angeles, 2000), see chap. 8 on busts of architects. Cf. Ingamells J. , The English episcopal portrait 1559–1835: A catalogue (London, 1981).

For example, Robinson N. H. , The Royal Society catalogue of portraits (London, 1980); Catalogue of portraits and busts in the Royal College of Surgeons of England, with short biographical notices (London, 1930?); and Wolstenholme G. (ed.), The Royal College of Physicians of London: Portraits (London, 1964).

Appadurai A. (ed.), The social life of things: Commodities in cultural perspective (Cambridge, 1986) is useful, esp. chaps. 2 and 6.

See Driver A. , Catalogue of engraved portraits in the Royal College of Physicians of London (London, 1952); Wolstenholme (ed.), The Royal College (ref. 13); and Wolstenholme G. , The Royal College of Physicians of London, portraits: Catalogue II (Amsterdam, 1977). See also ref. 46.

Dukelskaya L. Moore A. (eds), A capital collection: Houghton Hall and the Hermitage (New Haven and London, 2002). Andrew Moore's essay (pp. 3–53) shows how this worked, and the importance that Horace Walpole in particular attached to provenance. Jenkins , “Dr. Richard Mead” (ref. 5), discusses the life histories of items in Mead's collections. See Lloyd C. Remington V. , Masterpieces in little: Portrait miniatures from the collection of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (Woodbridge and New York, 1996), 20, for Horace Walpole's comments on Mead's collection.

Macmichael W. , The gold-headed cane (London, 1827). It was first published anonymously, the dedication being signed by “the editor”. The facsimile edition of 1968, based on the author's annotated copy of the first edition and published by the Royal College of Physicians, is especially useful. On the cane, see also: Coriat I. , “The symbolism of the gold-headed cane”, Annals of medical history, vi (1923), 126–30, and Meade , In the sunshine (ref. 5), 98–100. The point about Macmichael's conservatism is made in Hunt T. , “Introduction” in the 1968 edition, pp. 1–26, e.g. pp. 18–19.

Lynch D. , The economy of character: Novels, market culture and the business of inner meaning (Chicago and London, 1998), discusses some examples. Another eighteenth-century example is Smollett T. , The history and adventures of an atom (Athens, Georgia and London, 1989), a political satire, first published in 1769.

Gold-headed cane (ref. 17).

Lives of British physicians (London, 1830).

The 1740 portrait of Mead by William Hoare in the Royal College of Physicians includes a medallion of Harvey: Taylor D. Shawe , Genial company: The theme of genius in eighteenth-century British portraiture (Nottingham, 1987), 23. Keynes G. , The life of William Harvey (Oxford, 1966), suggests further affinities between Mead and Harvey. See for example his discussion of Harvey's interest in Stonehenge (chap. 12), later studied by William Stukeley, an associate of Mead's; his references to Sir Théodore Turquet de Mayerne (chap. 13), whose portrait Mead owned; and his suggestions concerning Harvey's contacts with the Earl of Arundel and his circle (chap. 27). Mead owned objects that had been in Arundel's collection as well as a portrait of him (see ref. 54).

Jordanova L. , The sense of a past in eighteenth-century medicine (Reading, 1999).

Baker M. , Figured in marble (ref. 12), and Return to life: A new look at the portrait bust (Leeds, 2000).

Gold-headed cane (ref. 17), 78.

Ibid., 95–97, emphasis in original.

Ibid., 121–2.

McKitterick D. (ed.), The making of the Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge (Cambridge, 1995), see esp. pp. 114–16 on busts in libraries elsewhere in England, in France and in Ireland; Eustace K. , “The politics of the past: Stowe and the development of the historical portrait bust”, Apollo, cxlviii (1998), 31–40; and Baker , Figured in marble (ref. 12), 58–60, 129–30 (chap. 10 discusses garden sculpture in general).

Roscoe I. , “Peter Scheemakers”, Walpole Society, lxi (1999), 163–304, esp. pp. 188, 190–1, 198–9, 233–4, 251–2, 255–6, 257–8, 261–2, 264, 271–2, 288, and 291; Gunnis R. , Dictionary of British sculptors 1660–1851 (London, 1953), entries for Roubiliac and Scheemakers; and Whinney M. , Sculpture in Britain 1530–1830, rev. edn (Harmondsworth, 1988), chaps. 13, 15 and 16.

Solkin D. , “Samaritan or scrooge? The contested image of Thomas Guy in eighteenth-century England”, Art bulletin, lxxviii (1996), 467–84; the cane (ref. 17) mentions Mead as the person who persuaded Guy to found the hospital in the first place (p. 115).

For the text of the inscription see Roscoe , op. cit. (ref. 28), 261. See also Keynes G. G. , The portraiture of William Harvey (London, 1949), esp. pp. 11–14, 32–34.

On royal medicine see Lamont-Brown R. , Royal poxes and potions: The lives of court physicians (Stroud, 2001), and, for a more scholarly account, Funnell E. , The royal doctors 1485–1714: Medical personnel at the Tudor and Stuart courts (Rochester, N. Y., 2001), esp. chap. 8.

Allen B. , Francis Hayman (New Haven and London, 1987), is the standard work on Hayman. Hayman produced a painting for the Foundling Hospital in 1746. The portrait of Scheemakers is not listed; strictly speaking it is attributed to Hayman.

Cotes died young and a posthumous edition of his work edited by Robert Smith was dedicated to Mead. The link with Jurin, who fulsomely dedicated a publication to Mead, is mentioned in the anonymous memoir of Mead included in editions of his Medical works, e.g. The medical works of Richard Mead (Edinburgh, 1775), pp. v–vi.

McKitterick (ed.), The making (ref. 27), esp. chap. 4 by Malcolm Baker.

Westfall R. , Never at rest: A biography of Isaac Newton (Cambridge, 1980), 866–67, 869, makes it clear that Mead was one of the doctors Newton consulted. On Mead, medicine and Newtonianism, see Guerrini A. , “Newtonianism, medicine and religion”, in Grell P. Cunningham A. (eds), Religio Medici: Medicine and religion in seventeenth-century England (Cambridge, 1996), 292–312; Brown T. , “Medicine in the shadow of the Principia”, Journal of the history of ideas, xlviii (1987), 629–48; and Cook H. , “The new philosophy and medicine in seventeenth-century England”, in Lindberg D. Westman R. (eds), Reappraisals of the scientific revolution (Cambridge, 1990), 397–436.

Avery C. , “David Le Marchand: Precursor of eighteenth-century English portrait sculpture”, The British art journal, i (1999), 27–34. For the ad vivum portrait of Newton owned by Mead, see pp. 33–34. We should note that Le Marchand also portrayed Guy, Locke and Stukeley. See also Avery C. , David Le Marchand 1674–1726: ‘An ingenious man for carving in ivory’ (London, 1996). The Stukeley portrait is especially significant: It is “the only known example by Le Marchand of a wreathed head in classical guise. This was almost certainly imposed … by the sitter” (p. 81); furthermore, Stukeley attended all the sittings Newton gave to Kneller (p. 82). William Hunter bought a portrait of Newton by Kneller at Mead's sale. On images of Newton, see Fara P. , “Faces of genius: Images of Isaac Newton in eighteenth-century England”, in Cubitt G. Warren A. (eds), Heroic reputations and exemplary lives (Manchester, 2000), 57–81, and idem, Newton: The making of a genius (London, 2002), esp. chap. 2. On Kneller and his links with Mead, see Stewart J. D. , Sir Godfrey Kneller and the English baroque portrait (Oxford, 1983), 61, 79. Mead owned a Kneller self-portrait, which cannot be traced, according to Stewart. See also p. 55 and plates 106c and d for images of Stukeley, which Avery argues may be related to Le Marchand's portrait.

McKitterick , The making (ref. 27), chap. 4; Bindman D. Baker M. , Roubiliac and the eighteenth-century monument: Sculpture as theatre (New Haven and London, 1995); Gunnis , Dictionary (ref. 28); and Whinney , Sculpture (ref. 28), chap. 15.

On the Bentley–Mead connection, which was extremely close, see Monk J. , The life of Richard Bentley D.D (2 vols, London, 1833), esp. ii, 114, 158–9, 170, 356–7.

Webster M. , “Taste of an Augustan collector: The collection of Dr. Richard Mead”, Country life, cxlvii (1970), 249–51 and cxlviii (1971), 765–7, and Jenkins , “Dr. Richard Mead” (ref. 5).

Mead R. , “Oratio anniversia Harveiana” in The medical works (ref. 33), 487–99. The oration was read to the College of Physicians on 18 October 1723.

Evans J. , A history of the Society of Antiquaries (Oxford, 1956), and Piggott S. , William Stukeley: An eighteenth-century antiquary (Oxford, 1950). Unfortunately Piggott gives a misleading impression of Mead when he calls him “no great scholar” (p. 27). See also Sweet R. , “Antiquaries and antiquities in eighteenth-century England”, Eighteenth-century studies, xxxiv (2001), 181–206; Lippincott L. , Selling art in Georgian London: The rise of Arthur Pond (New Haven, 1983), 89–90; and Jordanova , Defining features (ref. 7), 147 for Stukeley's portrait of Mead, and 28 for a colour reproduction of Ramsay's portrait of Mead.

White C. Alexander D. D'Oench E. , Rembrandt in eighteenth-century England (New Haven, 1983).

Smart A. , Allan Ramsay: Painter, essayist and man of the Enlightenment (New Haven and London, 1992), on Ramsay's debts to Mead, and pp. 89–90 on the Flora Macdonald portrait specifically; and Gunther A. E. , An introduction to the life of Thomas Birch D.D., F.R.S. 1705–1766 (Halesworth, Suffolk, 1984), 33, for a list of those who attended Mead's dining club.

unknown Author, “Memoirs of the life and writings of the author [i.e. Richard Mead]”, in The medical works (ref. 33), pp. iii–xv, p. vi.

Martin R. J. J. , “Explaining John Freind's History of physic”, Studies in history and philosophy of science, xix (1988), 399–418. Most sources on Mead mention their friendship.

Chaplin A. , A descriptive catalogue of the portraits, busts, silver and other objects of interest in the Royal College of Physicians of London (London, 1926), 61–64, lists the silver, including a punchbowl given in 1719 and candlesticks, 1720, by Mead, Freind and others. See p. 67 for the cane itself.

Nichols R. H. Wray F. A. , The history of the Foundling Hospital (London, 1935); Nicolson B. , The treasures of the Foundling Hospital (Oxford, 1972); McClure R. , Coram's children: The London Foundling Hospital in the eighteenth century (New Haven and London, 1981); and Nolan A. , “Philanthropy and visual culture: The Foundling Hospital in mid-eighteenth century London”, Ph.D. thesis, University of East Anglia, 2003. Mead was involved with the Foundling Hospital from the very beginning.

Smart A. , Allan Ramsay: A complete catalogue of his paintings (New Haven and London, 1999), catalogue number 611, p. 206, listed as untraced, but recorded in the sale after Mead's death.

One influential example is Solkin D. , Painting for money: The visual arts and the public sphere in eighteenth-century England (New Haven and London, 1993), esp. pp. 159–76.

Uglow J. , Hogarth: A life and a world (London, 1997), 343. Uglow stresses, as do others, the complexities of Hogarth's relationship with Ramsay, which I have simplified here. See also Smart , Allan Ramsay (ref. 48), 7–8.

Paulson R. , Hogarth, ii: High art and low 1732–1750 (Cambridge, 1991), 157–61; Hallett M. , Hogarth (London, 2000), 148–52; and Uglow , Hogarth (ref. 50), chaps. 16 and 17.

Ramsay's court appointment, as painter to the King, dates from 1761. Smart , Allan Ramsay (ref. 43), is the definitive work on Ramsay, see p. 154, plate 135, his portrait of his second wife c. 1758–60, for an outstanding example of ‘French’ delicacy. Note also p. 194, plate 170, the portrait of Hunter William , c. 1764?, with its soft Chardinesque tones.

Pointon M. , William Hogarth's Sigismunda in focus (London, 2000), esp. pp. 10–11, summarizes these points neatly. Whitley , Artists (ref. 5), i, 87, confirms the point with a story about Roubiliac's fee for doing Mead's bust. Askew “full of indignation, sent the receipt to Hogarth in order that he might show it to the artists at their next meeting”. This suggests the recognition of Hogarth's status as a critic of trends in the art market, especially, we may surmise, those connected with non-native artists like Roubiliac.

Nance B. , Turquet de Mayerne as baroque physician: The art of medical portraiture (Amsterdam and New York, 2001), outlines Mayerne's life and medical ideas. Huemer F. , Portraits I, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard: An illustrated catalogue raisonné of the work of Peter Paul Rubens (Brussels and London, 1968–), xix, 178–80, discusses the portrait Mead owned and dates it between December 1630 and March 1631. See pp. 105ff for the portrait of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, which Mead also owned. Given the distinction of this sitter's collections, it is possible that Mead felt a special kinship with him too. See also Martin J. R. , “Portraits of doctors by Rembrandt and Rubens”, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, cxxx (1986), 7–20, esp. pp. 9–10 on Turquet. Martin also comments on Rubens's portrait of Ludovicus Nonnius, from the late 1620s (pp. 8–9). Like Mead, he was a doctor and antiquarian with a special interest in numismatics. He is depicted with a bust of Hippocrates. The portrait, now in the National Gallery, was in British private collections during Mead's lifetime.

Jordanova , Defining features (ref. 7), 30.

Pears I. , The discovery of painting: The growth of interest in the arts in England 1680–1768 (New Haven and London, 1988), chap. 4, esp. p. 110. See also pp. 260–1 for comments on Mead's collection of portraits.

Smart , Allan Ramsay (ref. 48), 140.

A catalogue of the genuine and capital collection of pictures, by the most celebrated masters, of that late great and learned physician, Doctor Richard Mead (London, 1754); A catalogue of the genuine, entire and curious collection of prints and drawings … of the late Doctor Mead (London, 1755); Bibliotheca Meadiana (London, 1754); Museum Meadianum (London, 1755); and A catalogue of the genuine and entire collection of valuable gems, bronzes, marble and other busts and antiquities, of the late Doctor Mead (London, 1755).

White Alexander D'Oench , Rembrandt (ref. 42), see p. 115 concerning two Rembrandts sold after Mead's death but now unknown; and Lippincott , Selling art (ref. 41), esp. p. 90.

Lloyd Remington , Masterpieces (ref. 16), and Pointon M. , ‘“Surrounded by brilliants’: Miniature portraits in eighteenth-century England”, Art bulletin, lxxxiii (2002), 48–71.

Gold-headed cane (ref. 17), 80; for the debate about coins see pp. 79–80, for Linacre pp. 80–84, and Caius pp. 84–85.