Dr Mead

Dr Richard Mead was one of the most celebrated physicians in Georgian England — a Fellow of the Royal Society, a collector of extraordinary breadth, and the leading medical man of his generation, attending both Queen Anne and George II. His portrait by Ramsay, now at ANGUSalive in Angus, Scotland, is one of several likenesses of Mead that circulated widely in the eighteenth century, testifying to his cultural prestige. Mead's collection of paintings, antiquities, coins, and books was legendary, and his house in Great Ormond Street functioned almost as a public museum. A portrait of Mead by Ramsay is therefore a meeting of two of the most distinguished figures in mid-eighteenth-century British cultural life. The Angus location suggests this may be a studio copy of a London original, distributed to a Scottish institution or collector.

Ramsay's portraits of distinguished older men from the professional classes show a particular quality of attention to the face as a record of accumulated experience. The characteristic smooth modelling of flesh tones, the probing observation of the eyes, and the restrained palette of the professional coat create a work whose psychological content exceeds the demands of mere record portraiture.