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  • A shield for espionage: Thomas de Leu’s portrait of Sir Francis Drake

    21/11/2016

    The iconography of Sir Francis Drake is rich and complex (Sugden and Turner). His many portraits arise from his fame as a circumnavigator, as admiral in Queen Elizabeth I’s navy, as English hero in the battle against the Spanish Armada,… Continue reading

  • R.I.P. Chief Inspector Dreyfus

    27/09/2012

    The BBC reports the death earlier today of the actor Herbert Lom, who played the police chief in the Pink Panther films. His many other roles included parts in The Ladykillers (1955) and The Phantom of the Opera (1962). Herbert… Continue reading

  • Soyez le bienvenu!

    26/04/2012

      The Wellcome Trust was honoured to receive a visit today by H.E. The French Ambassador, M. Bernard Emié. Among the items shown to him was the most splendid of the Wellcome Library’s recent French acquisitions, the portrait of the… Continue reading

  • New article on a portrait of record

    11/04/2012

    Drawing by Pierre Chasselat. Wellcome Library no. 729420i An exceptional neoclassical portrait drawing that was acquired by the Wellcome Library in 2010 is the subject of an article in the current (April 2012) issue of The Burlington magazine. [1] The… Continue reading

  • Looking at Sir James Young Simpson

    07/06/2011

    As today is the 200th anniversay of the birth of Sir James Young Simpson, we did think of marking the day by highlighting the works in our collections written by him, which reflect not just his pioneering work in the… Continue reading

  • New acquisition: a portrait of Ange-Bernard Imbert-Delonnes

    19/05/2011

    The great aspirations, dramatic events, heroic deeds and terrible crimes against persons that occurred in France between the first stirrings of the Revolution in 1789 and the end of the First Empire in 1815 remain stamped in the public memory… Continue reading

  • Cardiac history roundup

    31/03/2011

    Wellcome Library no. 679722i   The photograph above, dated 1931, portrays the cardiologist Edward Franklin Bland. Born in Virginia in 1901, Bland spent most of his career at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), where he was an Intern, House Officer,… Continue reading

  • Robert Gooch: “A name, I trust, that will not perish in the dust”

    23/11/2010

    Robert Gooch by John Linnell, 1831. Wellcome Library no. 3701i Some 9,000 of the Wellcome Library’s portrait-prints and -drawings are catalogued in the Wellcome Library catalogue, but most of the records are very brief: they omit much of the information… Continue reading

  • George III’s 250th anniversary. Wellcome Library Item of the month

    25/10/2010

    On 25 October 1760, the British King George II died and his 22-year old grandson George William Frederick, previously Prince of Wales, became “His most Sacred Majesty George the IIId, King of Great Britain &c.” (above). Looking back from today’s… Continue reading

  • Asylum portraits

    08/07/2010

    “Mental: a history of the madhouse” was a 60-minute television documentaryin the BBC Four/Open University “Out of Mind” Season, broadcast in the UK in May 2010. [1] It told the story of the closure of Britain’s mental asylums. To quote… Continue reading