Charles Darwin

John Collier painted Charles Darwin in 1883, two years after Darwin's death — the work was based on earlier sittings and photographic sources rather than direct observation from life. Darwin had been Collier's father-in-law's closest friend and intellectual ally, and Collier had access to the Darwin family circle that enabled him to produce a portrait of particular intimacy and authority. Darwin's appearance in 1882 — elderly, heavily bearded, wearing his characteristic cape — was already well established through photographs taken during his final decade. Collier's task was therefore partly archival: to create an authoritative painted record of the man who had most fundamentally changed the Victorian understanding of human origins. The National Portrait Gallery holds this as part of its collection of major Victorian scientific and cultural figures. Darwin's significance had only grown in the year following his death, and Collier's portrait contributed to the rapid posthumous canonisation of a figure who had been deeply controversial during his lifetime.

Oil on canvas with Collier's realist approach to portraiture: careful tonal modelling in the face, convincing material rendering of the distinctive dark cape. Working posthumously from photographs and records, Collier would have compensated with detailed attention to the well-documented visual details of Darwin's appearance.