Joseph Dalton Hooker by George Richmond, RA 1809-1896

Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817-1911)

George Richmond, RA 1809-1896

Captioned: "From the Portrait by George Richmond, 1855"

Source: Huxley, frontispiece

This is Joseph Hooker as a serious, sensitive-looking up-and-coming botanist, in the year that he became assistant to his father, who was the Director of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. [Commentary continues below.]

Image capture, text and formatting by Jacqueline Banerjee.

You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the source and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one. [Click on the image to enlarge it and mouse over the text for links.]

Hooker would succeed his father as Director ten years later, and become a highly distinguished man of science. Even now, in this portrait, he looks the very picture of the "gentleman scientist," but in reality he badly needed to support himself and his family by working as a professional (see Endersby 321).

Related Material

Joseph Dalton Hooker

Hooker in later life, in a medallion by Frank Bowcher

Reference

Endersby, Jim. Imperial Nature: Joseph Hooker and the Practices of Victorian Science. London: University of Chicago Press, 2008.

Huxley, Leonard. Life and Letters of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, Vol. I . London: John Murray, 1918. Internet Archive. Contributed by University of California Libraries. Web. 15 April 2015.

Last modified 15 April 2015