Painting of Sir Hans Sloane

Attributed to John Vanderbank, 18thC(early)

Audio guide stop 111 · Room 2

• Audio guide stop: 111
• Gallery: Room 2
• Maker: Attributed to John Vanderbank
• Date: 18thC(early)
• Object type: oil painting
• Materials: canvas
• Museum number: Painting.24
• Museum: The British Museum
• Collection record: British Museum website
• Image © The Trustees of the British Museum, shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence.

About this object

This is a portrait of Sir Hans Sloane, a notable figure from the 18th century. Seated with a paper in hand, he appears as a man of great intellect and standing. In the background, you’ll notice a sculpted relief of Aesculapius, the Greek god of healing, and on the table is the mace of the Royal Society, a symbol of Sloane's leadership in the field of science.

The painting was once thought to be the work of Sir Godfrey Kneller but is now attributed to John Vanderbank, an English painter of the same era. The detailed work is rendered in oil on canvas, a technique that was widely used and valued for capturing fine features and textures.

Sir Sloane was President of the Royal Society and played a key role in the founding of the British Museum. Here he is shown in an elaborate chair displaying the Royal Society’s emblem, reinforcing his prominence.

See it in person

Painting of Sir Hans Sloane is on display in Room 2 at the British Museum on Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, London — free to enter. Choose British Museum on audioguide.london and type its audio guide stop number, 111, from the gallery label, or take a photo of it, to hear this free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.

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  1515-1520 (CHAIN: Type first documented from the mid-15th-century onwards in the visual arts of the Burgundian Netherlands and Iberia. CLASP: Design based on device of Basle-based printer Johann Froben, developed by Hans Holbein the Younger first used in via Erasmus’s Novum Instrumentum (1516) and popularised in England via Thomas More’s Epigrammata (editions of March and December 1518). PENDANT: The heart-shaped pendant with twisted wire border documented in early 16th-century manuscript illustrations from Flanders; letters H and K, heraldic Tudor roses and pomegranates, relate the piece to King Henry VIII and his first wife Katherine of Aragon (m. 1509); first known use of entwined roses and pomegranates emerging from single stem is 1511; motto TOUS IORS not yet located, but the spelling found in contemporary Henrician sources. Katherine exiled from Henry’s court in 1531, marriage annulled in 1533. SCIENCE: Analysis puts the making of the clasp and pendant before about 1530. SUITE: The objects were discovered together as a suite and appear to be broadly contemporaneous; a combination of the hand-and-cloud, entwined branch, letters H&K, knots and heart motifs is documented in use on the third day of jousting at Greenwich in October 1518 in tournament staged to celebrate Treaty of Universal Peace (also known as the Treaty of London, a non-aggression and mutual aid pact between 20 European countries against perceived threat of Ottoman Empire) and betrothal of Princess Mary (2 years) to French dauphin (8 months). This may explain TOUS IORS, which not only means always in French, but fuses French (tous) with English (yours) in an aural pun.)

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