The Thomas Hodgkin portraits: a case of mistaken identity.

Despite his fame as a physician and social reformer, relatively few portraits of Thomas Hodgkin, MD (1798-1866), have been published. Two oil paintings, identified by the Hodgkin family as their forebear, have been a puzzle.' The faces are remarkably dissimilar. One portrait hangs in the Gordon Museum at Guy's Hospital Medical School, its artist heretofore unknown (plate 1). It shows Dr Hodgkin seated in a large upholstered armchair. His dark hair, sharp aquiline nose, and penetrating gaze, commented upon by everyone who knew him, are its outstanding features.2 The second portrait (plate 2), presently owned by a branch of the Hodgkin family living in Ilmington in the North Cotswold hills of Warwickshire, shows the head and upper torso of a brown-haired man, with gentle eyes, a straight nose, and cleft chin. Family tradition has held that this too was the doctor, perhaps at a younger age, done by a different artist. Neither portrait is signed or dated. Now identification of both can be made with greater certainty , thanks to a third portrait recently found at Friends' House Library, London, and thanks also to the expertise of members of the staff of the National Portrait Gallery, and to the archives of the Hodgkin family and of Guy's Hospital.