Thomas Henry Huxley

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Thomas Henry Huxley

by José Maria Mora
albumen cabinet card, 1876
5 1/2 in. x 4 1/8 in. (141 mm x 104 mm) image size
Purchased, 1988
Photographs Collection
NPG x35907

Sitterback to top

Artistback to top

  • José Maria Mora (circa 1849-1926), Photographer. Artist or producer associated with 26 portraits.

Placesback to top

  • Place made: United States (photographer's studio, 707 Broadway, New York)

Events of 1876back to top

Current affairs

Following the introduction of the Royal Titles Act, Queen Victoria is proclaimed Empress of India, with Disraeli deliberately flattering Victoria's imperialist ambitions. In turn, Victoria creates Disraeli Earl of Beaconsfield; he continues to run government from the Lords.

Art and science

The classical-subject painter Lawrence Alma-Tadema, famous for his elegant depictions of the Roman Empire, paints An Audience at Agrippa's.
US inventor Alexander Graham Bell invents and patents the telephone following research into vocal physiology and speech instruction for the deaf, after discovering that sound could be transmitted and reconverted through an electric wire by using a continuous electric current.

International

15,000 Bulgarian Christians are slaughtered by Turkish troops in retaliation for the killing of 300 Turks in Batak at the start of the Bulgarian uprising. The Turkish government practices further repression by compulsorily transferring people of other ethnicities to Bulgaria to make the Bulgarians a minority. Gladstone published a pamphlet The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East attacking Turkish actions, selling 200,000 copies in a month.

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David E. Wolf, PhD

21 March 2018, 16:49

I believe that one can more accurately ascribe a date of August to September 1876 to this photograph, rather than c 1880 as stated. Mora was a competitor celebrity photographer to Napoleon Sarony in New York City, where the image would have had to be taken. During those dates Huxley was in the United States to speak at the dedication of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore on September 12, 1876 and he traveled and lectured extensively along the east coast promoting Darwin’s theories (see for instance http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/huxleyt.html Interestingly and supportive, there is also a letter from Napoleon Sarony dated 16 September 1876 requesting that Huxley sit for him (http://www.imperial.ac.uk/recordsandarchives/huxleypapers/HUXS001s.htm In August of 1895 the Literary News published a portrait of T. H. Huxley which it claims was from a photograph by Napoleon Sarony in 1876. I am suspicious that this was actually from Mora's photograph. (https://books.google.com/books?id=ugdIAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA240&lpg=PA240&dq=huxley+sarony&source=bl&ots=aP12fqQ751&sig=yDiXqG0vw12uXG0dHk_VosfcyH8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjtvPvT6v3ZAhWsm-AKHeKMANUQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=huxley%20sarony&f=false)