[Owen, Richard.] T. H. Maguire.

A lithographic portrait of Owen, image size approx. 9.5 x 11.5” (24 x 29cm.; total plate size 17.5 x 24”); some spotting, mostly outside of image, a little creasing to head of plate, generally in good condition.

This image of the 46-year old Richard Owen formed part of a series of portraits of important scientists, all of them honorary members of the Ipswich Museum. Founded in 1846 with the financial assistance of George Ransome, an Ipswich industrialist, the Museum drew support from many of the leading scientists of the time, including its first president William Kirby, as well as Charles Darwin, John Stevens Henslow, Sir William Jardine, Adam Sedgwick, Charles Lyell, and others. Ransome commissioned Thomas Henry Maguire, a leading portraitist, to depict the sixty or so honorary members of the Museum, and the resulting plates were collected in 1852 as Portraits of Honorary Members of the Ipswich Museum (the series also goes by the titles Portrait of scientific members of the Ipswich Museum and Portraits of Eminent Scientists, etc.). The present portrait of Owen, which may be a proof before letters (other copies bear the printer’s details, M. and H. Hanhart), is very scarce.