Sir Michael Foster

Inscriptionback to top

Signed in red paint lower left: ‘John Collier / 1907’.
On frame, lower centre, brass plaque inscr.: ‘SIR MICHAEL FOSTER, 1836–1907 / Artist: J. Collier, 1907’.
On reverse largely illegible exhibition label: ‘The late … Foster … FRS … / No. 2…’ (this appears to be the remnant of the 1907 RA label);
on top stretcher, small label: ‘May 1920 / NPG’.

This portraitback to top

This portrait is one of an impressive series depicting eminent scientists by John Collier, which endow the sitters with forceful visual presence within a sober format. It combines a strong sense of Foster’s professional standing with Collier’s pictorial authority. According to the Lancet, this portrait was begun in autumn 1906, at the request of the artist. The last sitting took place just a week before Foster’s unexpected death in January 1907 at the age of 70. [1]

The request is said to have been in recognition of the long and unbroken friendship between Foster and fellow scientist T.H. Huxley, [2] who was also the artist’s father-in-law. It appears that a portrait of Foster was also desired by the Royal Society, where he had served as a long-standing secretary; and at the same time as this full-length image Collier produced an identical bust-length version (see ‘All known portraits, Paintings, drawings, sculptures and prints, c.1908’), which was ‘presented by subscribers’. [3]

Partly owing to his famous father-in-law, Collier was the artist of choice for portraits of the scientific elite in the late-Victorian period. As well as Huxley and Foster, his sitters include Charles Darwin, Joseph Dalton Hooker, William Huggins and William Kingdon Clifford. His portrait of Foster presents him in professorial mode, as in a lecture theatre, with chalk in his hand and on the blackboard a list of substances that were then regarded as necessary for human physiological function. Indeed the list appears to be taken directly from chapter or lecture 12 in the textbook Physiology for Beginners, published by Foster and his Cambridge colleague Lewis E. Shore in 1894:

From the cavity of the alimentary canal the useful parts of the food – the proteids, carbohydrates, fats, salts and water – are absorbed, that is, they pass into the tissue forming the Wall of the alimentary canal … By the process of digestion the food materials are rendered capable of absorption and of assimilation. These changes are chiefly brought about by the action on the food of certain juices which are prepared – secreted, as it is called – by certain tissues, and are poured into the cavity of the alimentary canal … the saliva, the gastric juice, the pancreatic juice and the bile. [4]

The portrait was presented by the sitter’s family. His son wrote: ‘From my point of view the blackboard and the pose make a very different presentment to the mere head which is in the Royal Society.’ [5]

Dr Jan Marsh

Footnotesback to top

1) Lancet, 7 Aug. 1920.
2) Lancet, 7 Aug. 1920.
3) The existence of a Michael Foster portrait fund is noted in Royal Soc. council minutes, but no date of commission or donation is included.
4) Foster & Shore 1894, p.132.
5) Letter from M.G. Foster to J.D. Milner, 25 July 1920, NPG RP 1869.

Physical descriptionback to top

Three-quarter-length standing to left, holding chalk in right hand; blackboard in background.

Provenanceback to top

Sitter; sitter’s widow; sitter’s son Michael George Foster, by whom presented 1920.

Exhibitionsback to top

Royal Academy, London, 1907 (545), as ‘The Late Sir Michael Foster, K.C.B., F.R.S.’.

View all known portraits for John Collier

View all known portraits for Sir Michael Foster