The eminent physician and anatomist Dr William Hunter (1718-1783) made an important and significant contribution to the history of collecting and the promotion of the fine arts in Britain in the eighteenth century. Born at the family home in East Calderwood, he matriculated at the University of Glasgow in 1731 and was greatly influenced by some of the most important philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment, including Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746). He quickly abandoned his studies in theology for Medicine and, in 1740, left Scotland for London where he steadily acquired a reputation as an energetic and astute practitioner; he combined his working life as an anatomist successfully with a wide range of interests in natural history, including mineralogy, conchology, botany and ornithology; and in antiquities, books, medals and artefacts; in the fine arts, he worked with artists and dealers and came to own a number of beautiful oil paintings and volumes of extremely fine prints. He built an impressive school of anatomy and a museum which housed these substantial and important collections. William Hunter’s life and work is the subject of this book, a cultural-anthropological account of his influence and legacy as an anatomist, physician, collector, teacher and demonstrator. Combining Hunter’s lectures to students of anatomy with his teaching at the St Martin’s Lane Academy, his patronage of artists, such as Robert Edge Pine, George Stubbs and Johan Zoffany, and his associations with artists at the Royal Academy of Arts, the book positions Hunter at the very centre of artistic, scientific and cultural life in London during the period, presenting a sustained and critical account of the relationship between anatomy and artists over the course of the long eighteenth century.
...MoreReview Alicia Hughes (2019) Review of "William Hunter and his Eighteenth-Century Cultural Worlds: The Anatomist and the Fine Arts". Archives of Natural History (pp. 377-378).
Book
María Dolores Sánchez-Jáuregui;
Mungo Campbell;
Nathan Flis;
(2018)
William Hunter and the Anatomy of the Modern Museum
(/isis/citation/CBB956650771/)
Article
Marianne Klemun;
Marina Loskutova;
Anastasia Fedotova;
(2018)
Skulls and Blossoms: Collecting and the Meaning of Scientific Objects as Resources from the 18th to the 20th Century
(/isis/citation/CBB042290012/)
Thesis
Rispoli, Stephanie Adair;
(2014)
Anatomy, Vitality, and the Romantic Body: Blake, Coleridge, and the Hunter Circle, 1750--1840
(/isis/citation/CBB001567614/)
Book
Martin, David L.;
(2011)
Curious Visions of Modernity: Enchantment, Magic, and the Sacred
(/isis/citation/CBB001251944/)
Chapter
J. J. Liston;
(2013)
From Obstetrics to Oryctology: Inside the Mind of William Hunter (1718-1783)
(/isis/citation/CBB814229958/)
Article
Douglas, A. Starr;
Hancock, E. Geoffrey;
(2007)
Insect Collecting in Africa during the Eighteenth Century and William Hunter's Collection
(/isis/citation/CBB000774086/)
Article
Hancock, E. Geoffrey;
Brown, Georgina V.;
Jowett, Brian;
(2011)
Pinned Down: The Role of Pins in the Evolution of Eighteenth Century Museum Insect Collections
(/isis/citation/CBB001022492/)
Thesis
Richard Thomas Bellis;
(2019)
Making Anatomical Knowledge About Disease in Late Georgian Britain, from Dissection Table to the Printed Book and Beyond : Matthew Baillie's 'Morbid Anatomy' and Its Accompanying Engravings
(/isis/citation/CBB288181113/)
Article
Hancock, E. Geoffrey;
Douglas, A. Starr;
(2009)
William Hunter's Goliath Beetle, Goliathus goliatus (Linnaeus, 1771), Re-Visited
(/isis/citation/CBB000932310/)
Article
Olivier-Mason, Joshua;
(2014)
“These Blurred Copies of Himself”: T. H. Huxley, Paul Du Chaillu, and the Reader's Place among the Apes
(/isis/citation/CBB001201803/)
Book
Jorink, Eric;
Ramakers, Bart;
(2011)
Art and Science in the Early Modern Netherlands
(/isis/citation/CBB001201611/)
Article
Grigson, Caroline;
(2015)
New Information on Indian Rhinoceroses (Rhinoceros unicornis) in Britain in the Mid-Eighteenth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB001422136/)
Chapter
Christopher Plumb;
(2018)
Bird sellers and animal merchants
(/isis/citation/CBB206197364/)
Article
Craske, Matthew;
(2011)
“Unwholesome” and “Pornographic”: A Reassessment of the Place of Rackstrow's Museum in the Story of Eighteenth-Century Anatomical Collection and Exhibition
(/isis/citation/CBB001200259/)
Article
Matthew P. Romaniello;
(2022)
Could Siberian ‘Natural Curiosities’ Be Replaced? Bioprospecting in the Eighteenth-Century
(/isis/citation/CBB410787740/)
Article
Bertoloni Meli, Domenico;
(2015)
The Rise of Pathological Illustrations: Baillie, Bleuland, and Their Collections
(/isis/citation/CBB001552433/)
Thesis
Sara Ray;
(2022)
Monsters in the Cabinet: Anatomical Collecting, Embryology, and Bodily Difference in Holland, 1664-1850
(/isis/citation/CBB361834904/)
Article
Knoeff, Rina;
(2015)
Touching Anatomy: On the Handling of Preparations in the Anatomical Cabinets of Frederik Ruysch (1638--1731)
(/isis/citation/CBB001422112/)
Article
Lenaghan, Julia;
(2014)
The Cast Collection of John Sanders, Architect, at the Royal Academy
(/isis/citation/CBB001421840/)
Article
Guerrini, Anita;
(2004)
Anatomists and Entrepreneurs in Early Eighteenth-Century London
(/isis/citation/CBB000774438/)
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