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Free entry - booking recommended

Tuesday to Saturday: 10am – 5pm

Museum gallery, with yellow walls. Down the left side there are two display cases, a table with a projections of a book, and two large oil paintings. At the end a display case is filled with specimens in glass jars. A doorway through this case leads to further displays of specimens.

John Hunter – The Making of a Surgeon

How did John Hunter become a surgeon? This room explores Hunter's early career, working at his brother William's anatomy school before enlisting as an army surgeon, his partnership with the dentist James Spence, and appointment as surgeon to St George’s Hospital.
Oil painting of a man (William Hunter) seated at a table, head turned to the left of the picture and supported on his left hand, the elbow of which rests on the table. His right hand rests on the bottom corner of an open manuscript folio which lies on the table with another book and a specimen (a corrosion cast of the heart and lungs) under a bell glass. He wears a full wig and a grey suit with lace cuffs and a white cravat. Below the table to the right is an oval shield with female figure.

William Hunter (1718–1783)
by Robert Edge Pine, 1760s

Three quarter length portrait of a seated man (John Hunter) facing left. Hunter wears a brown overall lined with white, worn over an embroidered red waistcoat and white cravat; with dark breeches and white stockings. His red hair is unpowdered and tied back. His left hand rests on his left knee, while his right hand, holding a quill, rests on a table covered with a dark red and blue tapestry drape. Beneath his right hand is an open notebook, with another slim volume below that, and an inkstand in front. On the front corner of the table closest to Hunter is a small monkey skull, probably of a macaque, to which the point of the quill is directed. Dimly visible in the background is a classical statue of the goddess Diana. On the left hand side of the canvas is what appears to be a silhouetted profile of a human head, just visible above the quill.

John Hunter (1728–1793)
by Robert Home, early 1770s