Edward Jenner

Overview
Extended Catalogue Entry

Edward Jenner

by James Northcote
oil on canvas, 1803
50 in. x 40 in. (1270 mm x 1016 mm)
Given by the sitter's friend, James Moore (later Carrick-Moore), 1859
Primary Collection
NPG 62

Sitterback to top

Edward Jenner (1749-1823), Surgeon; discoverer of vaccination. Sitter in 11 portraits.

Artistback to top

James Northcote (1746-1831), Painter; pupil and biographer of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Artist associated with 103 portraits, Sitter associated with 23 portraits.

This portraitback to top

The background of this painting was not finished until after Jenner's death in 1823 when Northcote wrote: 'on a table in the picture I have introduced the bones and joints of a Cows hoof and in a glass case the Cows hoof injected, all which is to show what were his peculiar Studies'.

Linked publicationsback to top

Audio Guide
Smartify image discovery app
Cooper, John, Visitor's Guide, 2000, p. 65
Hackmann, W.D., Apples and Atoms: Portraits of Scientists from Newton to Rutherford, 1986, p. 38
Hart-Davis, Adam, Chain Reactions, 2000, p. 85
Holmes, Richard; Crane, David; Woof, Robert; Hebron, Stephen, Romantics and Revolutionaries: Regency portraits from the National Portrait Gallery, 2002, p. 149
John Cooper, National Portrait Gallery Visitor's Guide, 2006, p. 65
Ross, Josephine, Jane Austen and her World, 2017, p. 45
Saywell, David; Simon, Jacob, Complete Illustrated Catalogue, 2004, p. 336
Walker, Richard, Regency Portraits, 1985, p. 280

Subjects & Themesback to top

Events of 1803back to top

Current affairs

The Vice Society is formally established by John Reeves and his associates to campaign against blasphemy and immorality, particularly that perpetrated by Thomas Paine and the Edinburgh Review.

Art and science

Erasmus Darwin's Temple of Nature published posthumously. A scientific treaty in the form of an elaborate couplet poem, its content anticipated some of the evolutionary ideas developed by his grandson, Charles Darwin, fifty years later.
Construction of the Caledonian Canal begins.

International

War with France resumes, sparking new fears of a cross-channel invasion.
United Irishman, Robert Emmett's attempted uprising in Dublin. Planned to coincide with Napoleon's expected invasion, it aimed to overthrow the English administration but ended in failure. Emmett is hanged along with several other conspirators.

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