William Sharpey

Inscriptionback to top

Inscr. in pen and ink below photograph: ‘Dr Sharpey, Sec: R.S. &c.’

This portraitback to top

This photograph shows William Sharpey in his professional prime. In 1855 he was midway through 38 years as professor of anatomy and physiology at University College London; a gifted teacher, he motivated a generation of brilliant students, among them Sir Edward Sharpey-Schafer. That year he recommended a lectureship in practical physiology at University College – a move described as the single most important event leading to the re-establishment of British physiology.[1] At this date too Sharpey was the still relatively new secretary of the Royal Society (see inscription below NPG P120(21)).

Maull & Polyblank, in 1855, was a one-year-old partnership between the photographers Henry Maull and George Henry Polyblank. From the start they specialized in issuing large-format portraits of contemporary personalities, posed close to the camera; the compositions were typically plain and airy, with few props; the arched-topped albumen prints were mounted on good-quality paper and framed with gold ruled borders. In the publicity for their various portrait series, Maull & Polyblank styled themselves as ‘artists’, ‘artist-projectors’ or ‘publishers’, avoiding the term ‘photographer’ .[2] They aimed high: ‘to supply unerring portraits, at a moderate price, of great public men, whose history is that of the age in which they live, and whose features may thus be rendered as familiar as their names, and in due time, be transmitted with their works to posterity’. [3]

The photograph of Sharpey, NPG P120(21), belongs to one of their earlier ventures, photographing members of the Literary and Scientific Portrait Club, which ingeniously linked portrait sittings, collecting images of illustrious contemporaries, with the exclusivity of a club. [4] By around 1857 ‘club membership’ exceeded a thousand names. [5]

For further information see NPG Portrait Set ‘Literary and scientific men: photographs by Maull & Polyblank, 1855’.

Carol Blackett-Ord

Footnotesback to top

1) Sykes 2004.
2) See Maull & Polyblank advertisement, The Times, 4 Apr. 1856, p.13.
3) The Times, 4 Apr. 1856, p.13.
4) Charles Darwin was another early sitter; see NPG P106(7). In a letter to Allen Thomson, May 1855, he wrote: ‘You ask about my Photograph; I have been done at the Club’ (Darwin 1989, p.339). For further copies of the portrait of Sharpey, see NPG Ax87535; Royal Soc., London, IM/Maull/004131 (here rectangular, not arched top format, and mounted on a Maull & Co. card, the firm’s name from 1865); and Harry Ransom Center, U. of Texas at Austin, 964:0637.0001-0153. The photograph of Sharpey is repr. in Sykes 2001, fig.22.
5) Photocopy of brochure in NPG NoP (Maull & Polyblank). It is not known whether the Maull & Polyblank archive is still in existence.

Physical descriptionback to top

Three-quarter-length standing, looking three-quarters to left, balding, with whiskers but clean shaven, his right hand on a book which rests on a small table.

Provenanceback to top

Purchased from Robert Hershkowitz Ltd, 1979.

Reproductionsback to top

Macintyre & MacLaren 2005, p.96.

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