The work of surgeon and artist Joseph Maclise is the focus of a show at the Thackray Museum of Medicine in Leeds
It is an image of an unnamed black man with his eyes closed and his innards exposed. Drawn with care and precision, the image may be the only anatomical drawing of a black body made during the Victorian age.
Now it is part of a new exhibition that focuses on the work of Joseph Maclise, a surgeon and artist whose work – including his 1851 atlas Surgical Anatomy – made the human anatomy accessible to the general public, and who was the brother of the celebrated artist Daniel Maclise.
Jack Gann, the curator at Thackray Museum of Medicine in Leeds, which is hosting the Beneath the Sheets: Anatomy, Art and Power exhibition, says Joseph Maclise’s work also broke new ground by centring black bodies and focusing on queer desire.
The portrait of the black man featured in Surgical Anatomy, which sold widely. But when the book was published in the US that image was the only one omitted, with racial prejudice and segregationist attitudes in the lead-up to the American civil war blamed for the decision.
