A mystery astronomer

02 Apr 2011

The National Maritime Museum owns a painting that is something of a mystery, so I thought I would open the question up to readers of the blog. It was in the Museum's foundational collection, donated by its major benefactor, Sir James Caird (acquired from the collection of Wyndham Law of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service), then believed to be a portrait of Nevil Maskelyne. This explains why I have come across it again recently, for it is included in both the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry and Derek's Howse's 1989 biography, The Seaman's Astronomer. Howse, however, had his doubts about the attribution, for the sensible reason that it does not look all that much like the other known portraits. It now appears in the NMM's online catalogue as "Formerly called Nevil Maskelyne". If you do a Google image search you will find both attributions - you will also, bizarrely, find that you can buy a Photo Mug of Formerly Called Nevil Maskelyne from Amazon.

Here is the portrait in question, BHC2854:

Here is another portrait of Maskelyne from the NMM collections ZBA3405:

And a link to another oil portrait of Maskelyne, in the Royal Society's collection.

Now. It's hard, especially for a non-expert, to be conclusive about resemblances in 18th-century portraits, but in these two NMM images we have a clear difference in eye colour and, across all the portraits of Maskelyne that I've seen, the nose is a different shape to that in the first image here. Derek Howse, who was formerly head of the Astronomy and Navigation Department at the NMM, suggested that the portrait might in fact be of George Parker, 2nd Earl of Macclesfield, who was an astronomer and president of the Royal Society. I am tolerably persuaded that this portrait of Macclesfield at the Royal Society resembles our BHC2854.

What goes against this identification is the fact that the mystery portrait is apparently inscribed "Jno Downman Pinx. 1779", attributed to John Downman. Macclesfield died in 1764, and it seems somewhat strange that a Royal Academy-exhibiting painter of portraits and "fancy subjects" would have painted a deceased Earl. However, looking at other portraits by Downman, although many of these are watercolours rather than oils, I am not convinced that this really is his work - second and third opinions would be gratefully received.

In writing this post, however, I am particularly hoping that someone might be able to identify the book that the sitter is holding up. There appears to be two volumes, one open to show the titlepage(?) and a fold-out frontispiece depicting Saturn and Jupiter, with the four Galilean moons. This image does not strike me as either particularly suitable for Maskelyne (who in the Royal Society portrait holds up an optical diagram) or a depiction of cutting-edge astronomy for 1779, even admitting that Uranus was yet to be discovered. Macclesfield, however, had a truly wonderful collection of scientific books and manuscripts, rich in texts of the 17th century. These were, sadly, dispersed at auction and are now to be found gracing collections all over the world (although much ended up in Cambridge, including the Newton-related manuscripts). Could this portrait include two of the volumes from the Macclesfield Library?

Or maybe it is some other 18th-century gentleman and lover of astronomy? If it can be solidly identified as either Macclesfield or Maskelyne it may grace our future Longitude exhibition, for both were Commissioners of Longitude. If it is someone else... who could he be?!