Sir (Edwin) Ray Lankester

1 portrait matching these criteria:

- subject matching 'Pets and animals - Birds'

© National Portrait Gallery, London

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Sir (Edwin) Ray Lankester

by Sir Leslie Ward
watercolour, published in Vanity Fair 12 January 1905
14 1/4 in. x 10 3/8 in. (362 mm x 264 mm)
Purchased, 1938
Primary Collection
NPG 3006

Sitterback to top

Artistback to top

  • Sir Leslie Ward (1851-1922), 'Spy'; caricaturist and portrait painter; son of Edward Matthew Ward. Artist or producer associated with 1617 portraits, Sitter in 9 portraits.

This portraitback to top

Unusually for a Vanity Fair caricature, Lankester's colourful specimens of exotic fauna are prominent in the composition. The accompanying text gave a good-humoured account of the scientist: …the Bohemian of the scientific world. He is a veritable swashbuckler amongst professors, having not a pinch of dry-as-dust pedantry about him.

Linked publicationsback to top

  • Hackmann, W.D., Apples and Atoms: Portraits of Scientists from Newton to Rutherford, 1986, p. 63
  • Saywell, David; Simon, Jacob, Complete Illustrated Catalogue, 2004, p. 364

Linked displays and exhibitionsback to top

Events of 1905back to top

Current affairs

Following turmoil over the issue of Free Trade, Balfour resigns and calls an election, believing that the Liberals will be defeated. However, he is mistaken and Henry Campbell-Bannerman replaces him as the Liberal government Prime Minister.
The foundation of the Ulster Unionist Council, established to campaign against Home Rule, marks the birth of the Ulster Unionist party in Northern Ireland with the Duke of Abercorn as the first elected president.

Art and science

The Bloomsbury group of artists and intellectuals begin to hold informal gatherings at the home of Vanessa and Virginia Stephen. The group includes the artist Duncan Grant, biographer Lytton Strachey, and the art critics Clive Bell and Roger Fry.
The German theoretical physicist Albert Einstein has his 'annus mirabilis', publishing groundbreaking papers on the nature of light and motion, including his relation of mass and energy in the equation e = mc2.

International

Massacre of more than 100 workers at a peaceful demonstration by troops in St Petersburg becomes known as 'Bloody Sunday'. The event sparks the 1905 Revolution, with uprisings and peasant revolts in other cities, leading the Tsar to issue the October Manifesto, pledging moderate reform, including the establishment of an elected 'duma' (government), which only partially appeases imperial opposition. Still fighting Japan, the internal agitation weakens the imperial army.

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