[Aaron Henkin] This time we're not going to focus on the artist, but on the man depicted. He's Dr. James Smith. We have Linda Andre, who was a longtime educator here at the BMA to tell us about him. [Linda Andre] Well, when I look at Dr. Smith, I see a distinguished looking gentleman with curly brown hair, a black coat, and a stylish neck cloth. It's very hard to tell that this distinguished gentleman is a doctor. He did great things in saving thousands of people from contracting smallpox. Smallpox was a dreaded, horrible disease in the 18th century. Even those who were able to survive the disease were often left blind and with scars all over their bodies. In the late 1800s, a doctor named Edward Jenner, who was English, wrote a paper that Dr. Smith read. Dr. Jenner figured out a way to use virus from cowpox to inoculate people against smallpox. And Dr. Smith in Maryland started to collect vaccine and distributed among the people in Baltimore, sometimes for free. And then when that was successful, it went farther and he was able to become the vaccine agent nationally. Still, there were people who did not believe this was credible or even safe, and he actually inoculated his own five children and then purposely exposed them to serious smallpox, and they all survived. Medical historians give him great credit for saving many, many thousands of lives.

[Aaron Henkin] I spoke with Marshall Clark, a portrait photographer, about this painting. There's no background to speak of, no setting. He compared it to a contemporary headshot. [Marshall Clark] He's turned away three quarters. There's not a lot of modeling on his face. I think the light's coming from above a little bit. You can see a little bit of shadow under his nose. It's less interpretive and more of just a straightforward likeness of somebody. The two things that give this portrait the most life are his red cheeks, as well as his tussled hair to a certain extent. And those two things are in contrast to the rest of the portrait, which is so static and staid in a sense, and make this seem like a real person.