The eminent physician and anatomist Dr William Hunter (1718-1783) made an important and significant contribution to the history of collecting and the promotion of the fine arts in Britain in the eighteenth century. Born at the family home in East Calderwood, he matriculated at the University of Glasgow in 1731 and was greatly influenced by some of the most important philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment, including Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746). He quickly abandoned his studies in theology for Medicine and, in 1740, left Scotland for London where he steadily acquired a reputation as an energetic and astute practitioner; he combined his working life as an anatomist successfully with a wide range of interests in natural history, including mineralogy, conchology, botany and ornithology; and in antiquities, books, medals and artefacts; in the fine arts, he worked with artists and dealers and came to own a number of beautiful oil paintings and volumes of extremely fine prints. He built an impressive school of anatomy and a museum which housed these substantial and important collections. William Hunter's life and work is the subject of this book, a cultural-anthropological account of his influence and legacy as an anatomist, physician, collector, teacher and demonstrator. Combining Hunter's lectures to students of anatomy with his teaching at the St Martin's Lane Academy, his patronage of artists, such as Robert Edge Pine, George Stubbs and Johan Zoffany, and his associations with artists at the Royal Academy of Arts, the book positions Hunter at the very centre of artistic, scientific and cultural life in London during the period, presenting a sustained and critical account of the relationship between anatomy and artists over the course of the long eighteenth century.

William Hunter (1718-83) was an outstanding figure of his time, not only as a surgeon and doctor who successfully delivered six royal children to George III and Queen Charlotte, but also as Professor of Anatomy at the Royal Academy of Arts. His involvement in the arts, as a result of which he became intimate with Hogarth, Ramsay, Stubbs and Reynolds, stemmed from his pursuit of medical illustrations. He founded the first public museum in Scotland, the present Hunterian Museum in Glasgow, and bequeathed to it his remarkable collection of paintings, prints, drawings, coins, classical vases, medals, books and curiosities. Celebrating the 250th anniversary of the opening of the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow in 2007, this book provides a full study both of this many-faceted surgeon/connoisseur and of his collection of art, which not only contains a number of outstanding masterpieces, such as a Rembrandt, but also provides a revealing snapshot of the taste of the period. While illuminating this crucial transitional period in British art, the book is at the same time a catalogue of the Hunterian collection. Contributors: Peter Black, curator at the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow; Mungo Campbell, Deputy Director; Anne Dulau, curator; Helen McCormack, has a Paul Mellon grant to research William Hunter. Published to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the opening of the Huntarian Museum.