Henry Solomon Wellcome: three-quarter length. Oil painting by Hugh Goldwin Riviere, 1906.

  • Riviere, Hugh Goldwin, 1869-1956.
Date:
1906
Reference:
45867i
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About this work

Description

Henry S. Wellcome was born to a poor family of farmers in Almond, Wisconsin, in 1853. On his death in 1936 he brought into being a British charity, the Wellcome Trust, which many years later became the most highly endowed charity on the world. He owed this achievement to his success as a pharmaceutical manufacturer and salesman. He trained as a pharmacist at Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, and in 1880 went to England to join his college-friend S. Mainville Burroughs in a new pharmaceutical company called Burroughs, Wellcome & Co. After Burroughs died in 1895, Wellcome became sole proprietor of the company, and used his wealth to fund many charitable projects, including libraries, laboratories and museums. His own historical collection forms the nucleus of the present Wellcome Collection in London, and the Wellcome Building in London's Euston Road was built by him in 1932 to house it. At his death he bequeathed ownership of the pharmaceutical company to the Wellcome Trust, which owned it until 1986, after which the Trust gradually sold the company in order to diversify and stabilise its assets. Henry S. Wellcome's will formed the founding document of the Wellcome Trust, and the Trust's achievements in advancing knowledge for the public benefit therefore depends to a large extent on Wellcome's fortune and philanthropy

Publication/Creation

1906.

Physical description

1 painting : oil on canvas ; canvas 112.5 x 88 cm

Lettering

HRiviere 1906 Signature has HR in monogram

References note

Christopher Wright et al., British and Irish paintings in public collections, New Haven and London: Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2006, p. 683

Reference

Wellcome Collection 45867i

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