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The role of Isaac Newton

For three hundred years there has been no known extant portrait of Robert Hooke. Some believe that Sir Isaac Newton might have been responsible for this, whilst others doubt that such a portrait ever existed. Felicity Henderson has summarised the arguments:

• Hooke, Newton, and the 'missing' portrait

Historic named image

One known historic image bears Hooke's name, but clearly has no claim to be an accurate representation. A tiny bust labelled "Ho-ok" appears in the frontispiece of Cyclopaedia: or, an universal dictionary of arts and sciences, Volume 1 by Ephraim Chambers, published in London in 1728, only twenty-five years after Hooke's death. Other busts in the same illustration include Newton and Boyle.

• Cyclopaedia, at the Internet Archive

Spurious portraits

The issue of Time for 3rd July 1939 included a portrait alleged to be of "Scientist Hooke" (Time, 1939). The original engraving bore the names of neither subject nor artist. M.F. Ashley Montagu soon discredited the attribution (Montagu, 1941), noting the differences between it and contemporary descriptions of Hooke's appearance, including those by John Aubrey and Richard Waller.

Later, Hooke's biographer Lisa Jardine found a portrait in the Natural History Museum in London and published it on the cover of the first edition of her book. William Jensen, however, recognized the image as that of Belgian chemist Jan Baptist van Helmont (1580-1644). Jardine subsequently explained how the mistake had happened (Jardine, 2010).

Internet searches for portraits of Hooke still produce both of these false attributions, and others.

Recent reconstructions

A "formulaic" nineteenth-century memorial window to Hooke in St Helen's Church, Bishopsgate, where he was initially buried, was destroyed during the IRA bombings of the early 1990s.

There have been some attempts to reconstruct a portrait from the accounts of Aubrey and Waller. In 2003 a 'Portraying Robert Hooke' competition was run by the Library of the Royal Society to mark the tercentenary of his death. The prize was donated by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.

• Winning entry in Westminster School archive

Of these modern reconstructions, the best known are the series of paintings by Rita Greer. Examples of her work are on display at Gresham College, the Open University and Willen Church:

• Paintings by Rita Greer

Other possibilities

The wax seal

The Isle of Wight History Centre has conjectured that the wax seal on an assignment of a mortgage between the town of Newport and Robert Hooke, signed and sealed on 2nd February 1684/85, which is held by the County Record Office, represents Hooke himself.

• Is this the face of Robert Hooke?

The Beale portrait

Professor Lawrence Griffing of Texas A&M University has made the case for Portrait of a mathematician by Mary Beale (1633-99) being the missing portrait of Hooke. Beale was known to Hooke:

• Philip Mould, Portrait of a Mathematician c.1680. (Historical Portraits Picture Archive).
• Lawrence R. Griffing, The lost portrait of Robert Hooke?, Journal of microscopy, vol.278, no.3 (2020), pp.114-122. This is a freely available summary of an article of which the full version is limited to subscribers. Professor Griffing has also summarised his discovery elsewhere:
• The mystery of the missing portrait of Robert Hooke, 17th-century scientist extraordinaire.

The painting was sold by Sotheby's in June 2006, but the identity of the buyer has not been made public.

Griffing's argument has been described by Dr Christopher Whittaker as "unconvincing", although he has responded in its defence:

• Christopher Whittaker, Unconvincing evidence that Beale's Mathematician is Robert Hooke, Journal of microscopy, vol.282, no.2 (2021), pp.189-190.
• Lawrence R. Griffing, Comments on Dr Whittaker's letter and the article, Journal of microscopy, vol.282, no.2 (2021), p.191-192.

Whittaker suggests that the Beale portrait might actually depict the English theologian and mathematician Isaac Barrow (1630-77), and Alejandro Jenkins agrees:

• Portrait of the mathematician as a young man

The "Barrow" portrait

Intriguingly, Christopher Whittaker has now identified another possible candidate for the lost Hooke portrait, a painting in London’s National Portrait Gallery by an unknown artist of an unknown man, formerly thought to be Barrow:

• Has a 'lost' portrait of Robert Hooke been in the National Portrait Gallery since 1872?

The Verrio painting

Professor Michael McBride of Yale University believes that he has identified Hooke in the painting of James II receiving the Mathematical Scholars of Christ's Hospital, by Antonio Verrio (c.1636-1707), which still hangs in the school's present buildings at Horsham. Hooke was a governor of the school, and had met Verrio when the two worked on Montagu House in London.

• Might Robert Hooke be in Christ's Hospital's Verrio mural? (YouTube, 2023)
• Detail of the Verrio painting: Hooke is thought to be the kneeling figure in blue immediately to the right of the globe.

 
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A bust labelled "Ho-ok" in the frontispiece of Cyclopaedia, vol.1, by Ephraim Chambers (1728) (Image 1)

Left: spurious portrait in Time, 1939 (Image 2), and right: the portrait of Jan van Helmont once thought to be Hooke (Image 3)

Portrait of a mathematician by Mary Beale (Image 4)

Portrait formerly thought to be Isaac Barrow, by an unknown artist. (Image 5)

Extract from the Verrio painting at Christ's Hospital. (Image 6)