John Monro (1715–1791)

John Monro, painted in 1769, was the physician at Bethlem Hospital (Bedlam) who oversaw the treatment of the mentally ill—a figure whose place in the history of psychiatry was deeply ambiguous, combining genuine care with the limited and sometimes brutal methods available to Georgian medicine. Monro was involved in the treatment of the poet Christopher Smart and debated the treatment of George III during his mental illness. Dance's portrait of Monro gives the physician the formal dignity of a professional man at the peak of his career, with no hint of the controversial nature of his institution or the suffering of its inmates. The portrait documents a world of medical practice entirely different from modern psychiatry.

Dance presents the asylum physician with quiet professional authority, the calm expression and dignified pose conveying nothing of the grim realities of Georgian psychiatric practice over which Monro presided.