Charles Darwin, 1883, based on a work of 1881

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) began his career as a scientist in 1831, when his university tutor secured him a place on the voyage of HMS Beagle, which was shortly to embark on a survey of the coast of South America. Over the five-year expedition, Darwin visited Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, the Galapagos Islands, Australia and South Africa. His experiences on the voyage and the samples that he collected provided the foundations of his controversial work on evolution, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859).

Artist John Collier was the son-in-law of Thomas Huxley, Darwin’s defender in the furore surrounding the publication of his work. Collier’s portrait, which depicts Darwin as an old man, was much admired. Darwin’s son Francis wrote in his Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (1887), ‘Many of those who knew his face most intimately, think that Mr Collier’s picture is the best of the portraits and in this judgement the sitter himself was inclined to agree’. Collier’s portrait has since become the defining image of Darwin.

National Portrait Gallery, London Given by the sitter's son, William Erasmus Darwin, 1896
© National Portrait Gallery, London