A print reproducing a detail of a portrait of Dr William Hunter by Mason Chamberlin (Royal Academy, inv.no. 03/712). Proof without letters. Vignette.

The doctor and anatomist William Hunter was Physician Extraordinary to Queen Charlotte and oversaw the births of her children. He held several other significant appointments during his career, including that of the Royal Academy's first Professor of Anatomy. His responsibilities included delivering public lectures on anatomy, for which he developed his own écorché figures as a teaching aid, and he occupies a significant position alongside Joshua Reynolds (the academy's first president) in Johann Zoffany's group painting The Academicians of the Royal Academy (in the Royal Collection; RCIN 400747). Hunter studied the important corpus of anatomical drawings by Leonardo da Vinci in the Royal Collection (then in George III's library at Buckingham House) and hoped to publish them, as he explained in a lecture given at his own school of anatomy, but did not live to realise this ambition.

The painting which this print partially reproduces is a half-length portrait; Hunter's left elbow rests on a table as he holds a small écorché figure, and he gestures outwards towards with his right arm. It was painted in 1769, and probably given to the Royal Academy a decade or so later by the artist.