Object Number: K64

Collection: Fine Art

Object Name: painting

Title: Portrait of Richard Smith, Surgeon

Artist: BRANWHITE, Nathan Cooper

Description: an oil painting on canvas, showing: a half-length portrait of Dr Richard Smith Junior (1772-1843), a surgeon at the Bristol Royal Infirmary from 1796 until his death, who was known for his dissection of executed criminals; in 1802 he dissected the bodies of two women hanged on St Michael's Hill for infanticide, and gave a lecture on the brain of one to the Mayor and Aldermen; he also dissected a body found in a lead coffin near St Mary-le-Port church in 1814, removing the brain to his anatomical museum - the identity of the body was believed to have been Robert Yeamans, one of the "royal martyrs" tried as a traitor and executed in 1643 during the English Civil Way (even though Yeamans was supposed to have been buried in Christ Church, Bristol)