Recently, I was contacted
by a collector of Victorian portraits, Christian
Thurston. He was interested in acquiring the portrait
shown on the right in fig. 1. It is a portrait of a
rather pretty lady and her microscope. The motivation
for contacting me was to determine if I could identify
the microscope and its date of manufacture and perhaps
that would serve as a clue to help identify the
sitter.
It turned out to be
relatively easy to identify the maker of the
microscope. The unique shape of the base of the
microscope suggested it was one made by the
London-based instrument maker John Browning (c.1831-1925) and, in
fact, a nearly identical microscope appeared in an 1875
advertisement in the Quarterly Journal of
Science (compare figs 3 and 4); the illustrated
microscopes differ only by the shape of the stage. So
far, the identity of the microscope and its maker has
not proved to be of much help in establishing the
identity of the subject of the portrait, although the
microscope is consistent with the expected date of the
painting and its English origin.
As one might expect, if a
lady during the Victorian era had her portrait painted
next to a microscope, a microscope must have been a
very important part of her life. One such person,
probably the most famous lady microscopist of the
Victorian era (and they are a rare breed), was the
Anglo-Irishwoman Mary Ward (1827-1869). In addition
to the microscope, another prop is evident in the
portrait and that is the book that the lady is holding.
This is significant in that one of Mary's major
achievements, one which established her fame, was the
publication of her book Sketches with the
microscope, first published in 1858 (later
renamed World of wonders revealed by the
microscope). The book was very popular and was
reprinted eight times during the years 1858-1880.
Another of her publications, Telescope
Teachings (1859) was also very popular as were
several others.
fig 2: Mary Ward
(1827-1869)
Indeed, the person in a
photograph of Mary Ward (fig. 2) bears a strong
resemblance to the lady in the portrait. Thus, we
initially were confident that the pieces to this puzzle
were coming together. However, certain other facts have
raised some questions concerning the identity of the
sitter. One such fact is that Mary's microscope currently resides
in Castle Ward. It is not the microscope that is shown
in the portrait, but is instead a large microscope made
by Andrew Ross, c. 1850. However, further research
revealed that Mary may have owned other microscopes, at
least one of which presumably now resides at the Birr
Castle museum.
After this portrait was
purchased by the collector, he sent it out for a mild
cleaning. This revealed signatures by two artists and
the date 1882. The artists are William Harbutt, a well
known painter and teacher of portraiture from Bath in
England and Dennis Miller Bunker, an artist from
Boston, Massachusetts. It is known that Bunker was in
England and France around 1882.
Clearly, the 1882 date on
the painting is inconsistent with it being a life
portrait of Mary Ward who died in 1869 (as an aside,
Mary has the dubious distinction of being the first
person to have ever died in an automobile accident).
So, at this time we are forced to concede that the
sitter in the portrait may not be Mary Ward. It should
be noted that Mary had six children who survived into
adulthood. Is possible that they commissioned a
posthumous portrait of their famous mother or is this a
portrait of another lady who had a serious interest in
microscopy? One other possibility is that the second
artist was commissioned to add a microscope to the
original portrait and that the 1882 date is the date
that that was done.
fig 3: The 1875
advertisement in the Quarterly Journal of
Science
fig 4: An enlarged view
of the microscope in the painting