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ABSTRACT
During the second half of the eighteenth century London emerged as the centre of a growing scientific community, motivated and stimulated by an expanding empire. Within this closely connected metropolitan network, the figures of Sir Joseph Banks (1743–1820) and Dr William Hunter (1718–1783) exemplify the model of gentlemanly naturalist, each dynamically engaged in the pursuit of their interrelated interests in human and comparative anatomy, zoology and botany. Sir Joseph Banks's mansion at Soho Squre was a short stroll from William Hunter's Anatomy School at 16 Great Windmill Street and these homes of the President of the Royal Society and first Professor of Anatomy at the Royal Academy of Arts, respectively, acted as centres to the periphery, combining the accummulated knowledge of both institutions behind the domestic façade of their private homes. Both individuals commissioned a number of artists, combining the visual skills of the artist with the authentic expertise of the anatomist and naturalist. This paper describes these complementary approaches of Sir Joseph Banks and William Hunter, suggesting that while they each shared similar goals for the production of natural knowledge, these may have been motivated by quite different ideas on the purpose of their public roles.
Notes
1 Gascoigne, Joseph Banks and the English Enlightenment, 204.
2 See Latour, Science in action, 222. Latour's description of the accumulation and collation of knowledge during the Enlightenment era remains a useful model, distinguishing a form of early laboratory practice often within domestic settings. I have described both houses in detail previously, see McCormack, William Hunter and McCormack, ‘Superb cabinets’, therefore only a brief mention of these houses is given in this article.
3 Ogborn, ‘Designs on the city’: 15.
4 Gascoigne, Joseph Banks and the English Enlightenment, 186.
5 In December 1772, Gilbert White had visited Banks's museum in New Burlington Street and was impressed by the museum interiors. He describes a series of three large rooms, with each room containing an ‘inestimable treasure’. Alongside the display of objects brought back from Cook's Endeavour voyage, there is, writes White, in the second room, ‘a large collection of insects; several fine specimens of the bread & other fruits preserved in spirits … The number of plants is about 3000; 110 of which are new genera and 1300 new species.’ The third room, contains an almost numberless collection of animals; quadrupeds, birds, fish, amphibia, reptiles, insects and vermes, preserved in spirits … Add to these the choicest collection of drawings in natural history that perhaps ever enriched any cabinet public or private; 987 plants drawn & coloured by Parkinson, and 1300 or 1400 more drawn, with each of them a flower, a leaf, and a portion of the stalk coloured, by the same hand, besides a number of other drawings, of animals, fish, birds &c. And what is more extraordinary still, all the new genera and species, contained in this vast collection are accurately described, the descriptions fairly transcribed, and fit to be put to the press. See Holt-White, Gilbert White, vol. 1, 210–12. Harold B. Carter writes that there is no clear reason for Banks's move to 32 Soho Square but from Gilbert White's description, the New Burlington Street house was crowded. He also remarks that the location itself was unfashionable at this period: Carter, Sir Joseph Banks, 331. However, it is mentioned in Gwynn's plan, intended for future improvements, Gwynn, London and Westminster improved, 85.
6 TNA, PROB 11/1634/263, ‘The last will and testament of the Right Honourable Sir Joseph Banks’, 3.
7 Referred to by Banks as: ‘the unarranged regularity of my little den’, according to Harold B Carter. See Carter, Sir Joseph Banks, 173.
8 Ibid., 216.
9 Gascoigne, Joseph Banks and the English Enlightenment, 70.
10 Carter, Sir Joseph Banks, 141.
11 Carter provides details of the ‘engravers’ room’, fitted up with eight presses with shelves and drawers, each press capable of storing 90–100 copper plates of botanical engravings. However, the room must have also served as a studio, where the artists could make copies and work up engravings from original drawings. Situated underneath the herbarium at 32 Soho Square, this room was connected to the basement of the main house. Ibid., 336.
12 The source of this account of Banks's preference for ‘accurate’ drawing is Farington, Diary, 113. See also Bonehill and Daniels, eds., Paul Sandby, 19. For an explanation of this period of Zoffany's career, see Postle, ed., Zoffany, 31.
13 Smith, European vision, 13.
14 Ibid. See also Locke, Educational writings; Bermingham, Learning to draw.
15 Smith, Imagining the Pacific, 64. Smith articulates these different approaches to styles and aesthetics in the visual arts, as ‘empirical naturalism’ and ‘classical naturalism’, in the ways that artists distinguished a true representation from a more imaginative or fictional depiction.
16 Bonehill, ‘New scenes’: 9.
17 Thomas Falconer to Joseph Banks, 16 Jan. 1773, quoted in Smith, European vision, 14.
18 Gascoigne, Joseph Banks and the English Enlightenment, 40.
19 See Smiles, Eye witness. In relation to William Hunter and antiquarian investigation, see McCormack, ‘Dr Hunter's shield’.
20 Opitz, Berwick, and van Tiggelen, eds., Domesticity, 2. The exception to this being, perhaps, Shapin, ‘House of experiment’.
21 Vicq-d’Azyr, Oeuvres de Vicq-d’Azyr, vol. 2, 352–88; St James's Chronicle, 25 May 1779.
22 Fabricius gives a detailed description of the interiors of Hunter's museum, commenting on the display of the ‘fine large, engraved copperplates of the Uterus’, Fabricius, Briefe aus London, 75–94.
23 Gamer, ‘Scalpel to burin’. See also Daston and Galison, Objectivity, 74–7; Mount, ‘Van Rymsdyk’; Smiles, Eye witness, 13–23; Jordanova, ‘Gender, generation, and science’.
24 Ibid., 399. The anatomy of the human gravid uterus was explained by Hunter as part of his series of lectures in anatomy more generally. In the preface to The anatomy of the human gravid uterus, he explains how: ‘he has constantly explained his observations on this subject in his public lectures’, Hunter, Anatomy, 6.
25 William Hunter served as first Professor of Anatomy at the Royal Academy of Arts from 1768 until his death in 1783. His lectures to students at the RA exist in manuscript form but these are only a very small proportion of the lectures he must have delivered there over the course of his fifteen-year tenure. Inevitably, this means, that his role in the RA is often overlooked in studies of his anatomical teaching.
26 Postle, ed., Zoffany, 31.
27 See Guest, ‘Great distinction’: 42; Thomas, Entangled objects, 143.
28 See Postle, ed., Zoffany, 31; McCormack, William Hunter, 141–51.
29 For an overview of the work of early antiquarian and medical specialists, see Hanson, English virtuoso; McCormack, William Hunter, 19–46. The conventions of autopsia have a long tradition in medical history but perhaps are typified in this period by the work of William Harvey (1578–1657). Harvey, Exercitatio anatomica; Wear, ‘William Harvey’; Salman, ‘Harvey and art misplaced’.
30 For the most recent overview of the work William Hodges, in particular, see Quilley and Bonehil, eds., William Hodges.
31 Forster quoted in Smith, Imagining the Pacific, 72.
32 Hunter, ‘Account of the nyl-ghau’; William Hunter manuscript notes, Hunter MS, H.146(13) to H.150(10); see also McCormack, ‘Pennant, Hunter, Stubbs’.
33 Pennant, British zoology, vol. 1, 43.
34 Hunter MS, H.150(10).
35 McCormack, ‘Pennant, Hunter, Stubbs’, 212; Uglow, ‘Stubbs’.
36 McCormack, ‘Pennant, Hunter, Stubbs’, 214, Uglow, ‘Stubbs’, 48.
37 Smith, Imagining the Pacific, 63.
38 Strange, Descriptive catalogue.
39 Walpole, Aedes Walpolianae, 78–9.
40 See McCormack, William Hunter, 122–3.
41 Hunter refers to Leonardo as the ‘best anatomist and physiologist of his time’: Hunter, Two introductory lectures, 35.
42 Smith, Imagining the Pacific, 63.
43 Carter, Sir Joseph Banks, 140.
44 Bonehill, ‘New scenes’: 12.
45 Kelly, Society of Dilettanti.
46 Gascoigne, Science in the service of empire, 202.
47 Ibid.
48 Hunter, Two introductory lectures, 6; see also McCormick, Omai. For recent interpretations of the portraits of Omai, see Guest, Empire, barbarism, and civilisation, 68–90; Guest, ‘Great distinction’: 48–52; Quilley and Bonehill, eds., William Hodges, 134–5; Thomas, ‘Great collection of curiosities’. For a survey of Reynolds's portraits, including Omai, see Postle, ed., Reynolds.
49 Hunter, Two introductory lectures, 6.
50 Guest, Empire, barbarism, and civilisation, 69.
51 Hunter, Two introductory lecture, 6.
52 Ibid.
53 Gascoigne, Science in the service of empire, 199.
54 McCormack, William Hunter, 139–42.