Rembrandt Peale
Date:
1811–1815
Medium:
Oil on canvas
Size:
Width: 19 3/8″
Height: 23 1/8″

Looking out with a level, no-nonsense gaze, Dr. James Smith (1771–1841) is remembered as the “Jenner of America.” Shortly after the English scientist Edward Jenner discovered a means of vaccinating the public against the dreaded smallpox virus in 1796, Smith introduced a vaccine to the citizens of Maryland. Dr. Smith helped found the Baltimore General Dispensary and was its attending physician from 1801 to 1807. He opened a private vaccine institute in Baltimore in 1802 and later became the vaccine agent for Maryland. Subsequently, he was appointed United States vaccine agent, a position that he held until the office was abolished in 1822.

This portrait may have been painted for inclusion in a gallery of famous Americans at Peale’s Baltimore Museum and Gallery of Fine Arts. The oldest purpose-built museum building in the Western Hemisphere, the Peale Museum opened in 1814 and still stands on North Holliday Street, although its remaining collections were moved to the Maryland Historical Society in 1997.

Bequest of Elise Agnus Daingerfield BMA 1944.97

Looking with Portrait Photographer Marshall Clark

Transcript

[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.