| Reference number | VF/03 |
| Alternative reference number | VF03 |
| Level | Item |
| Title | Portrait of Sir Robert Stawell Ball by Sir Leslie Ward |
| Artist | Ward, Leslie ['Spy'] |
| Vincent Brooks, Day & Son |
| Date | 13 April 1905 |
| Description | Vanity Fair cartoon titled 'Popular Astronomy' featuring Sir Robert Stawell Ball standing in front of a celestial globe. Full length, full face. Number 949 of the 'Men of the Day' series. |
| InscriptionContent | Recto inscription: ‘VANITY FAIR Supplement/ Vincent Brooks, Day & Son. Ltd. Lith/ “popular Astronomy"/ Jehu Junior’ |
| Caption | Vanity Fair Supplement
Men of the Day. No. CMXLIX
Sir Robert Ball
Sir Robert Stawell Ball, Lowndean Professor of Geometry and Astronomy at Cambridge, applies a merry eye to the telescope,and smiles benevolently upon the stars. The comincation of with with the higher mathematics and of a warm heart with the unimaginable frigidity of space, is suggestive of Ireland to the intelligent biographer. Such characters are born, not made; and Sir Robert was born in Dublin. English schools and Universities have taught him to tolerate the Sassenach; but they have failed to eradicate that most precious of all possessions, his Celtic sense of humour.
Sir Robert comes of a learned family. His father was a naturalist of reputation, one brother became Director of Science and Art at the Dublin Meuseum, and another, Sir Charles Ball, a distinguished surgeon in the same city.
His mathematics brought him high pri\ws at school and college, and subsequently proxured him a post in Lord Rosses' observatory at Parsonstown, King's County. From that date he has mounted the astronomical ladder two steps at a time. A mathematical Professorship at Dublin was followed by his appointment as Astonomer Royal for Ireland. HIs lecturing tours at home and in America were planned at the Observatory, near Dunsink. It was there that he wrote the majority of those books on astronomy that have given simplicity and popularity to a recondite science. As these virtues of style are apt to be regarded with suspicion and indignation by more pedanitc mathematicians, Sir Robert saved his good name amongst the professors by a magnum opus on the "Theory of Screws," which, though profound, has nothing to do with Mr Chamberlain. in 1892 he left the Irish Observatory to sit in the chair that Cambridge had offered him.
Sir Robert prefers the music of the spheres to Wagner; he has made himself plain on that point, He does not ride to hounds, and yet is a judge of horseflesh. He extends his good temper to a golf ball even in its most evasive moods. Recently, he has deveopled a taste for politics, but ambition has not driven him into cadidature, though he is the Chariman of the Cambridge Conservative Caucus. He is a Commissioner of Irish Lights and Lighthouse. Doubtless, it was to aid him in his labours that the Spectacle-makes made him a liveryman of their body.
A wise, witty, and brilliant Irishman, of wide reading and worldly experience - such is Sir Robert Ball.
Jehu Junior |
| Format | Lithograph |
| Physical description | Coloured lithograph on paper, mounted on card |
| Dimensions | 380mm x 263mm |
| Notes | Text is accompanying article from "Vanity Fair" (by Jehu Junior) |
| Access status | Open |
| Copyright | The Royal Society |
| Provenance | Purchased by the Royal Society from Patrick Pollak Antiquarian & Rare Books, Septemer 1999 |
| Related material | Colour transparency, Box N101. IM/000222 |
| Related records in the catalogue | IM/000222 |
Fellows associated with this archive
| Code | Name | Dates |
| NA7578 | Ball; Sir; Robert Stawell (1840 - 1913) | 1840 - 1913 |