Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (1807-1873)

William Morris Hunt's 1874 portrait of Louis Agassiz — the great Swiss-American naturalist whose work at Harvard had made him one of the most celebrated scientists in America — is among the most important portraits in his output. Agassiz, who died in December 1873, was a foundational figure in American scientific culture, and Hunt's posthumous portrait (painted from photographs and existing likenesses for Harvard) documents the cultural stature of natural science in mid-century America. Agassiz had resisted Darwinian evolution, but his contributions to glaciology and zoology were internationally recognized. Harvard Art Museums hold this as a record of the university's most distinguished scientist and the Boston cultural world that Hunt served as portraitist.

Hunt's portrait of the scientist applies his Barbizon-influenced manner to an academic subject: the face rendered with warm, atmospheric modelling, the background kept indefinite. His characteristic warm brown-gold palette gives the portrait a gravity appropriate to a memorial commission. The sitter's intellectual authority is conveyed through direct gaze and serious bearing.