Image: ProfessorJamesGregory

Description: Professor James Gregory (1753-1821), three-quarter-length seated in grey suit, INS & DATED Treasures of Fyvie Catalogue, pp 58 Professor James Gregory (1753 - 1821) Oil on Canvas Gregory was a member of a remarkable medical and scientific family whose endeavours spanned five generations. His great-grandfather was the inventor of the reflecting telescope, his grandfather James was Professor of Medicine at King's College, Aberdeen, while his father John, was Professor of Medicine at Edinburgh. Gregory was appointed to his father's old chair in 1790 on the death of the great Physcian, William Cullen. Two of his sons by Isabella Macleod whom he married in 1796 were distingushed in mathematics and chemistry. He was a man of immense energy, with wide scientific and philosophical interests, but he tended to dissipate hispowers in needles controversy, which won him many enemies in the medical establishment. Lord Cockburn in his Memorials describes him as "a curious and excellent man... agreat Latin scholar, and a great talker, vigorous and generous, large of stature, and a strikingly powerful countenance". That Raeburn's portrait is successful as a likeness is confirmed by an etching done by John Kay in 1795, which shows Gregory in profile and wearing the uniform of the Royal Edinburgh Volunteers. He was an enthusiastic but not very competent soldier and his sheer mental energy is said to have provoked his drill sergeant to shout "Damn it, sir, you are here to obey orders, and not to ask reasons: there is nothin in the King's orders about reasons!... I would rather drill 10 clowns than one philosopher". A series of old labels on the back of the frame attached in the early nineteenth century when the picture was either at the family House of Canaan Lodge in Edinbyrgh or at the home of Gregory's daughter in Grosvenor Square, London, state that the portrait was painted by Raeburn "about 1798". This date, without qualifications, was later inscribed on the canvas. There seems little reason to doubt it, although lacking this evidence there might be a temptation to believe that it and its supremely beautiful companion were painted to celebrate the marriage of 1796." (James Holloway NGS").
Title: Professor James Gregory
Credit: https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/professor-james-gregory-17531821-196615/view_as/grid/search/keyword:james-gregory/page/1
Author: Henry Raeburn
Usage Terms: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
License: CC BY 4.0
License Link: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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